William, You're Dead!
by Todd Dawson-Cooper
Summary: Every movie, anime and TV show you've ever watched - Every comic, manga, and novel you've ever read - Every video game and visual novel you've ever played - are all combining into one. The walls of the multiverse are breaking down and heroes and villains are assembling. Many zombie-type pathogens are being released and starving vampires and werewolves are slaying upon every human.
1. Chapter 1: Awakening

**Boston, MA - 10:54pm -**

J.D. Salinas laid in bed in his apartment. He had retired from his job as a mercenary and was now living the free life. His home was a small apartment in the urban center of Boston. He was single and looking, but love never found its way to him. It had been almost a year since he last saw the girl he loved - Rain Ocampo. What insane life they had - in the beginning it was easy. They were mercenaries for the Umbrella Corporation. They were a sort of secret ops squad and covered up and dealt with what the S.F.U didn't. Then came the warm July night of 1998. They had been called in to deal with a situation regarding one of Umbrella's underground laboratories known as "The Hive". Apparently, the artificial intelligence "The Red Queen" had gone rogue and killed the workers in the facility. If only he'd had known they wouldn't stay dead. It was then he met Spencer Parks, Alice Abernathy and Matt Addison, the latter two of which would eventually play a large part in Umbrella's downfall. J.D. died, but to his misfortune found himself cloned directed to control and contain the outbreak in Raccoon City that had been a result of researcher William Birkin's misdemeanor it was while defending the last known base of defense against the undead in the city, he met and saved young William Kennedy and Sherry Birkin. There, the few learned quickly of the impending doom of Raccoon. As it turns out, William and Sherry had been witness to the outbreak shortly after the end of the school day and found temporary refuge in a mall alongside civilians Blair Natasha and Leon Lockheart.

Eventually the order was given to drop a large nuclear warhead on the city and by a stroke of luck, J.D. escaped. In the time afterwards. William, Sherry and a few others had hidden underground and managed to survive the bombing. Or so he had heard - apparently an Anti-Umbrella team known as "S.T.A.R.S Omega" that would later become the B.S.A.A had landed in the ruins of the city on their way to Caliban Cove and crossed paths with the survivors and a few remaining undead that had survived the bombing as well. That was the last time he had heard of William for almost ten years. It was in 2007 that he crossed paths again with William while on a Ski Vacation. There he had been attacked by new monstrous B.O.W's creations made specifically under William's instruction. Right when J.D. thought he escaped the Skii Facility, J.D. awoken to find himself - almost brainwashingly reliving the Hive incident with Rain, James, and Chad in a Red Queen produced "scenario" deep in an underground infection-testing facility modeled after The Hive - that's where he met William one last time in a final showdown. In the end, J.D. found himself fainting and through a burst of white light, awakening into a world where half of what he remembered had never occurred. J.D. still couldn't forget about it. Who was William anyways? Why did he go from being a young heroic survivor determined to save Sherry Birkin into an Umbrella mastermind? Had it to do with Albert Wesker - the man apparently in charge of Umbrella's wrong-doings?

He had done his research. Apparently, William Kennedy wasn't even the boy's real name, William Kennedy was the name of a bartender at Jack's Bar and Tavern or rather "J's Bar" as the sign above had said and as reporter Alyssa Ashcroft and waitress Cindy Lennox had confirmed. William Kennedy, known as Will by his co-workers, had died early into the Raccoon City Outbreak. So the question remained... who was this "William"? It still shook J.D. to this very day. Although he was now free from the terrors of Umbrella and life had seemingly never been easier, what happened in the past still affected him. Not as a memory, but as a recurring nightmare. Even though the B.S.A.A had apparently eradicated all the remaining bio-terrorist groups out there with the collapse of Tricell and WilPharma and even though Albert Wesker was "confirmed" dead according to media-stars Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine and Sheva Alomar. There was still the odd chance - and that was all it took to convince him otherwise. It wasn't over and it never would be.

J.D. looked over at the dresser next to the bed and stared at the photograph sitting there - It was a framed photograph of J.D. and Rain smiling and in each others arms. He sighs. Rain was down in Africa working on a safari and studying African predators mostly their hunting and mating behaviors J.D. knew that one of these days he'd get a card in the mail from her with a letter attached reminding him about some of their best memories together and a picture of her taken the same date as the letter, that's how it had been every month since she left. He'd keep all the pictures and put them in a photo album he had kept under his bed. For him, they were a reminder that even though he missed her dearly - the girl he was about to propose marriage to- she was having the time of her life and that was something he could take pride in. J.D. reaches past the picture and grabs the phone sitting on the dresser, trying not to knock the picture over or the lamp sitting next to it. He presses a button on the phone and goes through the directory, there are many familiar names and faces to him, He had even considered calling his friends Barry Burton or Dominic Toretto, however he continues down the directory and highlights the number that reads "RAIN'S CELL" and presses the "Dial" button on his phone, takes two deep breaths and puts the phone to his ear.

**Brooklyn, New York - 6:39 pm -**  
Jack Kennedy sat at home on his nice comfy couch, sitting next to him, his wife reading a book with interest. Jack stared at the TV, he grabbed the remote and changed the channel, once, twice - three times. There was nothing on, at least nothing that grabbed his attention. Jack looked at his wife - Felicity Belling-Rankin.

"What chapter are you on?"

"Twenty-one" she replied. "It's a really good book."

"I thought you might like it" Jack responds.

"The main character really reminds me of you" Felicity says, sliding a bookmark into the book, placing it on the table, leaning over and kissing Jack on the lips.

She caresses his body and notices the unusual warmth of Jack's body. The two continuing to kiss while Felicity moves her hands onto his belt and attempts to undo it when - the phone begins ringing. They both sigh and sit up on the couch, Jack reaches over and grabs his cell phone from off of the table it's an unknown number. He answers it and puts the phone up to his face.

"Hello?"

"So, I finally found your scrawny ass." a very low-pitched voice answers.

"Is this some sort of prank?" Jack replies annoyed.

"Still as scrawny as in college." the voice continues.

Jack stops for a second, his eyes widen in realization then he grins.

"Well, if it isn't Duke Nukem."

"Long time no punch." Duke replies over the phone.

Jack laughs under his breath and responds sarcastically.

"How's fame been treating you?"

"As if I haven't saved the world from madmen and aliens already."

Jack rubs his hand through his hair, it's been a long time since he had last talked to Duke - a long time - and frankly, Jack was lucky to have even known the guy before all the fame and popularity. In fact, before the whole ordeal back in the late 90's, Duke had been somewhat of a loser. Steroids and Beer were originally his escape from the world - now it seemed as if they were something just to boost him into it. A lot had changed since they were collage roommates back in 1989, more so than could be discussed in a 5 minute conversation over the phone.

"So what brings you to call me?" Jack asks.

"I'm coming back into town, feels like it's been awhile since I've seen the place."

"Never thought you'd consider this place better than Vegas."

"You can get tired of seeing your face everywhere" Duke replies.

"- There's a Halloween party going down at the old bar. Meet me there at 9 or your head on a platter." Duke finishes.

Jack looks at Felicity then back into the imaginary void he was staring at.

"Sound's like a plan." he responds.

"See you at the party." Duke says.

The line drops dead. Jack looks at the phone and shrugs as it reads "DISCONNECTED." He returns to the couch and plops down next to Felicity who stares at him curiously.  
"Look's like we have plans for tonight." Jack says to her, smiling.

**Los Angeles, California - 2:32pm –**

Liam Belling continued on his way down the busy Los Angeles avenue, passing by many tourist, office workers and children with their parents. Liam turned his direction towards an unknown man, his arm raised up, his face not visible due to the black fedora blocking it. Liam runs across the street towards the man barely dodging the cars speeding by him. Liam finishes his short jog to the man and looks at him coldly.

"This better be important, It's a long ride back to Beckinfield and I'm awaiting a call from an old friend of mine.

"Come, there is much to discuss." The man replies softly. They both turn around and enter through the large glass doors of the mall behind them. The two men then continue down a flight of stairs and into a somewhat fancy but dusty restaurant. There is hardly anyone there except the two of them, they both sit down at one of the many tables as a waitress walks up to their table.

"May I take your order?" she says kindly offering out a warm-hearted smile.

"Yes–" the man responds. "I'll have a medium-rare steak and a glass of wine."

The woman nods her head in agreement, writing down the man's request and turns to Liam.

"And for you, sir?"

"I'll just have a glass of water, thanks." Liam answers.

Again the woman nods her head and walks away. Liam and the man look at her then back at each other.

"So, what is this about?" Liam asks the man. He smirks.

"What do you know about the multiverse theory?"

Liam raises an eyebrow.

"Quite a bit actually, most scientists are more focused on understanding particle theory or string theory and breaking down the smaller things –" Liam stops, the man is looking at him in a fascinated sort of way.

"What does this have to do with me?" Liam finishes. The man leans back, stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles.

"The walls of the multiverse are breaking down." the man says casually. Liam stops, his heart literally skipping a beat and his lungs a breath.

"Breaking down? No — no, that's a scientific impossibility. It's been proven that every thing that can, did, or ever will happen – that..." Liam is interrupted.

"It's happening. The Watchers and the Lanterns are already assembling their heroes."

"How can this be possible?" Liam asks, he's sweating heavily. For all he knew he could be erased from existence within the next minute and nobody would even notice

"The main concern is of this virus called the "Gospel of Hunger" as the superheros are calling it. It's taking its toll in the multiverse. So far we've manage to find three specific but separate strains - the other two are known and recognized as the "Infestation" and "The Blackest Night." the man answers. The conversation has now seriously changed course.

"But I thought they had been contained?" Liam answers.

"No. Our sources state that an infected - and animate - skull of meta-human Wade Wilson still reigns the Marvel Universe. Nekron has escaped his banishment from his universe and is likely already starting his new apocalypse and the Infestation still lies in living artillica – Cross. The man finishes. He knows the severity of the issue. These infections were not only fatal and irreversible – they were incredibly contagious – they turned those infected into nothing but hungry beasts – intelligent hungry beasts that could survive pretty much everything except the removal of the brain.

"What are we supposed to do? We're simply muggles, You out of all people know the consequences of contravening with higher authority – especially in situations like this!"

"The Soul Reapers have received word and passed it down to me. I've been given permission in assembling a team – not of super-humans but of the most intelligent men and women in this world. The team is going to be led by none other than the "007" James Bond. I know you have connections. I know you can take the role of second in command."

"I think I know some people of interest – I don't know, I haven't had contact with either of them in years. They're both a bit socially awkward but they never leave a piece of evidence untouched and they are possibly the two greatest minds I've encountered." Liam responds – his mood has drastically changed, as shocked as he is about the turn of events that have occurred – the fate of the world now rests in his hands.

"Anybody, any help you can give is of necessity. Please." the man says.

Liam reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pen from his pocket and grabs a napkin writing down two emails.

"I think these two may be helpful."

The man looks at the napkin and the two emails written on it.

malcolm-ian379

The man puts the napkin in his pocket, when he feels a vibration - he pulls out his cell phone and looks at the screen with a dead look on his face. He puts the phone back in his pocket and looks back up at Liam.

"Thank you for your cooperation." he says raising up and leaving.

The waitress returns, looking at Liam and then at the man leaving, she places down both of the ordered meals.

"I'm sorry for the wait — do you want me to take this meal back?" she asks worried.

"No, leave it. I'm a bit hungry anyways." Liam says watching as the door behind the mystery man closes shut.

Czech Republic - 3:21am  
Matthew Zaph breathed in the somewhat chilly air of the middle of the night. It was the weekend of Hallow's Eve and the cold season was just around the corner. He could see his breath in the bit of light that had shone into the warehouse where he was standing. Matt - or rather, Viper was a hunter, daywalker, whatever they wanted to call him. Since the fall of the Death Dealers and their elders Victor, Markus and Amelia, things had been both rather peaceful and at the same time chaotic. The vampire race had almost entirely disappeared in America after the death of their leader Drake by the half-human/half-vampire Blade. Yes, now the United States had fallen into the hands of the Lycans - werewolves. It was only a matter of time before they infiltrated the White House - then the world. Viper on the other hand, could care less for those matters. He could handle vampires. He had before. Years ago, a vampire intruded his house and attempted to kill his family, Viper killed the intruder and moved far away from that place. His wife died of a disease and his two children were now in university. Viper killed vampires on his own, that's when he decided he needed some more people to help him, and after moving to Europe, He found just that.

Viper decided to walk a bit more, he was in the mood for something to drink - something with flavor and spike. He walked into a small variety store nearby, overhead the sound of a somewhat gleeful and annoying non-lyrical song playing from a small speaker. He ignored it at first, letting the music slip from his ears and walking his way over to the fridge and grabbing a can of Dr. Pepper. Walking up to the front desk, the music continued. It had gotten even more irritating in the two minutes it took him to decide between a bottle of Smirnoff Ice or the can of pop. Viper was sick of the music, he pulled out his customized 9mm pistol and shot the small speaker two times, the store had become dead quiet - just the  
way he likes it. The cashier had however cowered behind the desk in fear. Viper sighed.

"I'll be paying for that in Debit." he said casually.

A few minutes later he had finished drinking most of the soda and decided upon walking again, as he was passing by the local police station an officer had run out of the building towards another man sitting on a bench, who was wearing a white muscle shirt under a black leather jacket and sucking on a lollipop.

"There's a gang of people acting atrociously violent and causing mishap down by the harbour. The boss said to assemble the group - he said these people are apparently biting and slaying poor civilians." the officer said nervous and with his voice unintentionally raised.

"Biting? This is what happens when you let the police force have a break, the people start selling Bath Salts. Where to, Sherlock?" the other man said, standing up.

"The old abandoned warehouse... mansion thing." the officer had responded. The two speeded towards the police car and got in, driving off with sirens blaring. Viper knew what that meant. The warehouse, the biting - Vampires. A lot of them. He pulled out his cell phone and called his team members. He told them of what was going down, then he called the Whistlers and Bladefighters - two other gangs. He knew that the latter two were newly assembled groups and probably wouldn't be ready for this kind of action. During his calls, he warned them to wear masks at the risk of exposing their faces to the police. Viper jumped on his motorcycle that he kept hid behind the police station for emergencies like this and went on his way to the warehouse. He hoped there wouldn't be too much bloodshed and the situation could be solved as peacefully as possible but at the same time he knew his wishes would be in vain. _"Let's just hope we can keep the police safe."_ Viper thought to himself.

As Viper arrived at the warehouse he very clearly heard a woman scream. He turned just as Xander drove up in a burgundy-colored Mustang and got out of the car in a movie-esque entrance and looked at Viper. He walks up to Viper and puts a ski mask over his face, pulling a wooden spike out of his jeans pocket and holding it in his right hand.

"You ready for this dude?" He asked Viper. Locking his car with the small little remote he had kept on his key chain.

"I hope so." Viper responded.

Xander was once a firefighter. When he was young his mother was murdered by an intruder who broke into his home at a young age. Although there was never any proof, at the young age Xander was at that time, his imagination had led him to believe the intruder was a vampire. Years later, when working in the fire department, he had come face to face with a real vampire and since, he had hunted them. However, after years of loading shotgun shells into vampires both innocent and mass-murderers he got tired of the job and decided he was only going to hunt when he needed to.

Rebekah "Sizzle" Paster drove up to the scene in her 1967 Flame Red Mustang. Getting out and noticing the Mustang next to her, then at Xander who was leaning on it and lighting a cigarette that Viper had just given him.

"Looks like you finally got a nice car, Xander." Sizzle said playfully, announcing her presence and insulting Xander's usual sense of style.

Xander smirked at Sizzle's remark and turned back over to Viper.

"So, should we wait for the others?" he asks out of curiosity.

"I'd say yes, unless you want to die." Viper responds.

Xander looks at the warehouse and gets a sudden chill in his spine. He's nervous. Thankfully, he's not too nervous, he has experience. But still, it was unusual for vampires to gather in such large group and feed on innocent bystanders constantly. Normally, they hunted their prey, one by one. They would sometimes go in packs, but it was more common for vampires to work alone. They would become romantically involved with their prey, sometimes they'd strike within the hour, sometimes it could take days. But in the end, all it was for was temporarily quenching their never-ending thirst.

"Well how many are in there?" Xander asked yet again.

"Don't know, man." Viper says raising an eyebrow.

Viper looked around almost 15 minutes had passed and Viper, Xander and Sizzle were still the only one's there.

"Where is everybody?" he asks out loud. The others look at him and shrug. They don't know either.

Inside the warehouse, it was a slaughter-house, one of the vampires inside - named Maxor - hadn't had any blood in days, he was extremely weak as such and needed to feed - badly. He stared down the nearest human and in a stroke of light grabbed the human he had trained his eyes on and while the human begged for mercy bit deep, down and hard into the man's neck, there was a few seconds of squirming from the man before he gave up and fell lifeless. Those  
were the moments Maxor enjoyed the most. He dropped the human on the floor and licked the fresh blood from his lips, looking up and seeing a familiar face.

Artemis had walked into this so-called warehouse that had been filled with the exhilarating screams of the doomed humans. She caught her eyes on the nearest human, a rather plump one at that who had been quite round-shaped, grabbing the poor fat bastard and biting into his neck. She had noticed Maxor but didn't care much for it. She hadn't spoken to him since their last meeting in Australia. She had hoped that her dear friend Matrix would join in sometime soon, to her this was a fun game, watching the humans run like the cattle they had become, and when she turned she seen Matrix, scouting above them, looking for the best prey he could grasp his hands on.

Sizzle looked around, the others waited. More people we're dying by the second. But that didn't necessarily concern them. As much as they were human and wanted to save as many humans as they could. They were still only human's themselves, and they weren't any vigilante heroes or anything like that. They were simply humans whose goal was to hunt the creatures of the night, and maybe save one or two humans in the process. As they agitatedly waited, a '68 Impala had drifted from around the corner and next to the two Mustangs. Out stepped a young man, he looked to be around 19 years of age. Christopher Angels. He wasn't necessarily a vampire - not to the full extent at least. Nor was he a lycan or human for that matter. He was a bit of all. But the humans cared not for that, he was more human than the rest of them.

"Wi- Chris. You finally appear." Viper says staring him down.

"Thanks for not starting without me. I don't want to miss any of the action" Chris replies.

"Screw this. I'm going in." Sizzle says distastefully. She storms into the warehouse, leaving the others outside.

"What's wrong with her?" Xander asks, Viper and Chris shrug in confusion, a few seconds pass and then the sound of vampiric screams and gunshots emerge. Viper looks through the doorway, hoping that the three of them hadn't been caught up wind in a draft. However, a specific sight catches Xander's attention, the face of a young woman not much younger than Chris sitting in the passenger seat of his Impala. Xander looks at Chris angrily.

"You brought a human into this?" Xander asks him.

"Xander, there's no need for this. She may not be a hunter, but we're still of the same species. Now, Chris. Tell me she's staying in the car." Viper says, reassuring Xander, but still confused on Chris's intent.

"She's staying in the car. I just escaped through hell and back with this woman. She's a part of my life and has been for years. She's not going in."

"Right." Viper exclaims in slight disbelief, but he takes Chris's word and they proceed into the warehouse. Chris continued along them, entering what had now become an all-out battle like Viper had wished it wouldn't have.

"Man this sucks-" Chris had said. "I would rather spend the last few minutes of my life alongside a girl I admire than be ripped to shreds by 'Nightstalkers' in the heat of battle." Chris finished. Viper laughed at Chris's comment.

Xander had found Sizzle crazy for running in with only four of them, and god know's how many vampires. Sizzle had been having a blast however and was even humming to the theme of Jeopardy. Xander had upholstered a gun from his belt and aimed it at her, giving her a moment of worry before she turned to see that he had fired at a vampire that was just behind her.

"6 o' clock." Sizzle says casually.

"Gotcha." Xander replies, using the wooden stake he had held and stabbing the vampire directly behind him in the heart.

"Leave her be, Xander. Let her fight the way she prefers." Viper says to Xander with a half-assed look on his face.

"Oh, world of misfits. How much fun we have." Chris continues. Viper giggles under his breath, finding Chris and his comments to be very humorous as they continue to fight off the vampire horde. Chris however stops firing for a moment when the song "Bloodmeat" by Protest the Hero had begun blaring from his pocket. Chris reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cell phone.

"Yeah. I'll see you in 5...4...3...2...1" Chris counted just as young misfit "Kenny" had smashed into the place on a motorbike. He didn't know what kind it was, he had just taken it from a vampire he had killed only recently. The bike landed on top of some random vampire.

"How are you doing there?" he asked before shooting the vampire and watching it disintegrate into ashes, only to look up and see a familiar face, A good ol' friend of his, Sean James and behind him 25 vampires, none of whom he recognized from before, so to him they were all just randoms for the slaughtering, all it took was Sean snapping his fingers and all 25 of the creatures charged into the "war house". Kenny however is quick to react and shoots one in the chest killing it.

"And just when I thought this party was getting boring... Any of you want to dance?" Kenny remarks to the whole two dozen vampires charging at him.

"You're looking for a fight? Come on then, make a move." Sean says slowly moving towards Kenny. Kenny smiled at the invitation and pulled out a large knife and cocking his single-barrel shotgun.

"Me and you, big man. Unless your friends want to join in? There's more than enough for everyone." Kenny responds, his cocky attitude slowly but surely irritating Sean.

"What the hell are you doing?" Viper had said to Chris who had since moved from fighting the vampires to trying to plug his iPhone into the Public Announcement system in the warehouse.

"You'll see. I'm setting up some entertainment for the viewers" Chris says, motioning towards Artemis and Matrix who had retreated from the battle. Chris however, still seemingly fending off the vampires near him without even looking.

Jane Corsiek had hidden in the shadows for the better half of the massacre. She was torn as to where to go. She was a vampire, but deeply hated her own kind. She knew she sided by the humans and was welcome by the most, but she didn't want to fight... That was until she saw someone she knew. She strolled out of the darkness and without a second thought, drew her gun and fired, killing a vampire with one straight shot to the heart. It was a bit odd to her. She had the feeling of remorse, but it quickly gave way to the feeling of triumph.

"Ah, Jane. Wondering when you were going to show, my sweetie." Chris remarks aloud. Jane shoots him a look.

Jane jumped down from the second floor banister, landing simply in the middle of the battle. she circled one of the vampire men calmly, watching him with a grin, flashing her fangs for all to see. "Come on.. try it." She teased. Once he lunged for her she moved, then shot her hand out, grabbing his hair and yanking him to the floor. She placed a foot on his chest and knelt down to look at him, her hand still caught in his hair, she fires a bullet in the man's head, lifted up off of the ground and moved towards Chris.

"You've got nerve, doll." Jane says aiming her gun straight at his head.

"Wow, darling. You've sure grown. But I know you wouldn't do that. After all, you did say I was the only trustworthy one." Chris continues, grinning wildly.

"I don't recall." Jane is quick to respond.

"Of course, you don't. That was the night we got it on at the beach house, or do you forget that too? Vodka is a bitch to the weak minded." Chris continues.

"I'm not afraid to fire - doll. You probably took that quote out of context."

"Damn straight." Chris finishes playing with wires, he straightens himself and turns around to see Jane for the first time in years. He forces a kiss on her lips, she tries to push him off and fire a bullet at him, but he disarms her.

"Now, now, 'Doll'. Shouldn't we focus on the task at hand?" Chris adds, noticing the ever-growing group of vampire around them.

"Ya Think?" Xander adds, stabbing one of the many vampires in the heart with his stake while keeping a close eye on the vampire that has settled its eyes on Sizzle.

Jane and Chris turn away from each other and begin firing as music begins playing through the stereos in the building, temporarily dumbfounding everyone, but giving Chris an opening to kill the vampires in his and Jane's general vicinity to the theme of "Blow Me Away" that is now playing throughout.

Sean looked at Kenny, folded his arms, grinning and remarked "How about you put the gun away and fight like a man." Sean grabbed his pistol out of his holster and tossed it on the ground.

"See. I don't need a gun. Then again, I'm not a mere human."

Chris couldn't help but overlook as Sean threw away the gun. Thus, under the cover of the darkness Chris grabs the gun and presses the barrel to the back of Sean's head.

"Long time, no see, Comrade."

Sean laughed. Another old face that he hadn't seen in quite some time. "You think you can win this battle?" he asked

"I'm not a human anymore." Chris laughed. "I'm just like you, only stronger."

"Please, then why are you using guns? Are you two afraid to fight like a man, Willia-" Sean is cut off by Chris.

"By the way, you can call me Chris now."

"Okay then, 'Chris'. You want to get that gun away from my head?" Sean said to Chris - smirking. Chris however kept the gun pressed to his head.

"I won't fire as long as you leave this man here alone and alive. Understood? What does a big man like you have against a puny human like him anyways?" Chris said to Sean, referring to Kenny who was now a bit beaten up. Sean smirks, then grabs Chris from behind him and flips him over, slamming him onto the floor. Just in time for Viper to sneak behind Sean and slash Sean's leg with his sword. Sean fell down on one knee as the wound slowly began to heal.

"That was cheap, but then again, you are only human." Sean says, elbowing Viper into a wall then looking back at Chris. "If you want to be one of us, then back off right now!" Sean says, attempting to threaten and scare Chris.

Jane had cautiously sliced her way through the vampires, attempting to keep herself alive. But they were all mostly weak anyways, so it was pretty easy to hold up against their misdemeanor however a hand had managed to grab her shirt collar and throw her out into the open, she managed to stop sliding and get back onto her feet, aiming her gun at the attacker when a switch blade flings into the vampire's heart, killing it.

"Nobody touches the girl, understood?" he says to his men, they nod. Jane just stared, she was fighting against them. Why help her? She looked at the backing off vampires, flicked her wrist and made a whipping sound with her voice.

"How's it feel to be whipped, boys?" Jane remarks.

"Alright then, lady. If you want to be treated like that." Sean comments. He snaps his fingers and the five vampires attack her at once from all directions. Jane just shook her head.

"They say true love dies hard." Jane remarks, taking out Sean's men, beating the fight out of one and killing two of them with her gun until one was left standing, she smiles at the one remaining henchman. "You really gonna hurt lil' ol' me, darling?" Jane says sarcastically.

"If you want something you have to do it yourself." Sean said to himself, he grabbed his switch blade from the pile of ash where it laid and sneaks from behind Jane and holds it to her neck.

"How about you leave now, Then I don't have to see anymore of my men die."

"You can't do that." Jane adds.

"You're fighting for your side. I'm fighting for mine." She sharply kicked back and lunged forwards freeing herself from Sean's grasp, he was now about three yards away.

"Come at me." Jane smirks.

"You wanna finish the fight, sugar?" Sean remarks. "Or are you too afraid to?"

"There's nothing to fear but fear itself." Jane said coyly with a wide grin.

"Oh really?" Sean said. "I'm not sure if you noticed but I still have your gun." Sean added with a smirk pulling out Jane's gun and spinning it around his finger. Viper had looked back at Sean.

"S.J" he growled under his breath, grasping onto his sword and slashing Sean in his other leg. Kenny however had still been a bit thrown off by Chris's comment, he looked at the human who was protecting him. "Puny, who's puny?" he thought to himself, offended. His thoughts were cut short by a vampire punching him in the face. Kenny responded by slashing right through the random vampire's neck.

"Can't a guy inner monologue in peace around here?" Kenny said aloud and annoyed.

Chris looked at Jane and Sean and watched them fight, he had enough and took the open opportunity of Matthew slicing at Sean's leg to jump in front of Jane.

"If you want to kill Jane, you're going to have to go through killing me - even if you do. I'll be back, it's all in the deal with Wesker." Chris commented. He was willing to defend Jane at all costs. They hadn't seen each other in a long time, not since the day they played truth or dare in the streets. However, out of all their encounters, he would never forget the first time they had met on the beautiful empty bleach under the moonlight shine with their feet in the warm soft sand. Chris owed Jane a huge debt in return for her actions that fateful day.

"All of you, move!" Jane shouted, looking at Kenny and Viper. "This is between me and S.J" she said wanting to focus on her battle with Sean without interference. She shot Chris a look and said "William, I'm none of your concern."

Chris looked at Jane. If that was her choice then fine, but this was much more personal than what had occurred between him and Jane in the past. This was also about him and Sean. The Czech Republic was Chris's escape from his hideout in Edonia - a country of which had currently been in a war involving B.O.W.'s. This presented an issue in that once B.O.W.'s were confirmed, the B.S.A.A were brought in. Chris was already being hunted by the B.S.A.A. he was one of the most wanted fugitives in the world. Thankfully, his alias Christopher Angels and his most notable change of clothing and hairstyle had made it almost impossible to compare him to William Kennedy - the man he once was. Now, The Czech Republic was being threatened by hungry leaderless vampires, struck without covens ever since the death dealers became a thing of the past. Whistlers, Daywalkers, Hunters. Sure there were groups to stop the madness, but Sean was on the wrong side of the battle. This was his home for now, he wasn't about to travel to some other country because of a bunch of lowly vamps. Chris sighed and in a flash punched Sean, sending him flying across the room into the wall.

"Come on, can't I even get a break?" he muttered to himself, Sean supporting himself back onto his feet. "I must be pretty popular if everyone is ganging up on me." Sean said smirking. He knew they stood almost no chance - Well, Chris maybe. But Jane was a weak little girl who hadn't been a vampire as long as he had - he was stronger. Matt and Kenny were poor little humans, Kenny thinking of himself as tough and hard - but inside that hard shell was just soft candy. Matt was just a desperate loner with no family who seemed to be pouring his life into each sword swing that would just heal up a few seconds later.

"Come on baby, make the first move." he said to Jane.

"Leave me to fight on my own - I always have and I always will. If you want to fight Sean, you can do it after he kills me." Jane says to Chris and Viper and focusing on Sean's body movements.

"Make a move." she tells Sean, staring into his eyes with pure utter hatred.

"Alright then." Sean snaps back. Sean laughs under his breath "This is gonna be easy." he thinks to himself. He spins around and back-kicks Jane in the stomach sending her flying, Jane however manages to land on her feet. She holds her side. It'd be easier if the catsuit she was wearing had a partial corset around the waist.

"Not bad little man." she said. Now she was just being cocky. Nothing else was going to help her defense.

"Yeah, not bad." he replied before tripping her feet and knocking her onto the ground, Jane did a back flip away from him and landed on her feet and rose a brow.

"You going to hurt me or are we just going to play around?" Jane asked Sean jokingly.

Sean laughed. "How about if I win, you do something for me?" Sean wondered aloud moving in to kick her in the face. Jane however blocks the attack and moves back.

"Like what, doll?" she teased as she moved to the side to keep from being boxed in, she started to punch him in the face with a right hook.

"I was thinking maybe we could -" Sean was about to finish when Chris slashed him across the face. Sean fell to the ground with the attack and picked himself back up.

"Wow, I thought bad guys like me were supposed to fight dirty." Sean said to Chris - who didn't even answer. Chris just stared at him in a mix of anger and confusion, however there was a notable difference in Chris's eyes. His sclera had become black and his iris was a glowing red. Jane just rose a brow and tried to ignore.

"Fighting one on one sounds better, darling. I'll handle him, you take on the others." he said to Chris. Jane wanted to fight Sean on her own, not only to prove herself to the humans but also to agitate him with her flirts. Chris looked at Sean, then at the vampires that were attacking Xander and Sizzle and heading in their direction, in a flash throwing one of the vampires and tossing them under an ultraviolet and grabbing the other one by the throat and stabbing her through the heart with his bare hand, turning both to ash. Sean watched over Chris's actions. The way he was acting - he hadn't come across vampires that rabid in any place outside of Siberia or Barrow, Alaska during the temporary month of darkness. Sean turned around and shifted focus back to Jane.

"As I was saying - if I win, you go out on a date with me. If you win - then I don't know, name your prize." Sean says raising an eyebrow and smiling, admiring Jane's body like a work of art.

"A date? You want to go on a date with a woman who you just about killed?" she joked.

"If I win -" she shrugged. "I'll save it for later." she added.

"That's not how the game works - but okay." Sean says. Charging at her and punching her once in the face and twice in her stomach. Jane dodged them but barely got kicked in the face. She slid back and looked at him. She licked her lip where a small scrape had been left. She shook her head.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to hit a girl?" she grinned as she charged him, hoping to jump him and make him fall to the ground. Sean however managed to lessen the damage from the attack and kick her in the back. Thankfully, the kick to the back was light and Jane was able to move away, cautiously awaiting Sean's next move. However, Sean stopped and kneeled down slightly in pain remembering the gashes on his leg left by Matt hadn't entirely healed.

"Fuck, that hurt." Sean muttered under his breath. Jane walked up to him and placed her foot softly on his chest.

"Giving up yet, Darling?" she teases. Sean snickers.

"What, give up on a date with you? Hell no. Now be a good sports man and help me up." Sean teases lifting his arm out hoping that Jane would help him up.

"Nope, I won." Jane says. "So I get my half of the deal." she adds. This was mainly to see his reaction, but she didn't mind. Jane pulled Sean up by his shirt collar and kissed him on the lips without a slight bit of shame and then letting go of his collar and leaving him to fall on the floor and rising to her feet with a taunting grin.

"Hey, I fought you and all I got was a stupid kiss?" Sean said, jumping up to his feet and wiping himself off. "So, how about that date. I was a good sport, I let you win."

"Oh, you let me win?" she laughed. "I thought you'd fight harder if you really wanted that date." She grinned then looked at the others in the room. They were still pretty much fighting, Chris had managed to tear through nearly half of the vampires, though he clearly wasn't paying attention whatsoever to any of the humans nor to Jane or Sean. She sighed a little and looked at Sean.

"You know, if you go on a date with me. It's going to be hell." she chuckled and gave a small nod to him. "Alright, where and when?" she asked simply as she eyed everyone around her.

"I will let you know." Sean said. "Well, looks like we lost, come on guys. Let's get out of here." he said to his five remaining men, they weren't sure if he was being sarcastic until he started leaving, but they had enough. Sean looked back at Jane and winked. She watched as the henchmen disappeared then back to the others just in time to see Chris literally ripping the last vampire in half.

"Everyone, okay?" she asks.

"I think... I think we won." Xander said, looking over at Jane.

Artemis, Maxor, and Matrix were still standing by throughout the battle, however as it soon enough became obvious, Chris had entered a berserk blood rage and would almost be strong enough to take on a vampire elder.

That didn't stop Artemis however from dropping down. She kept her focus on Xander as she had for the majority of the battle. She was growing rather bored and hated being ignored.

Growing more pissed by the second she melted into the shadows. This was a trick she had learned long ago and nearly perfected, one of the reasons she was given the title 'Shadow Walker'. Completely hidden, her eyes went to Jane. That's the woman I saw in the room that one day. She remembered the strange vampire who fought her inevitable change. The young vampire shook off the thought and turned back to Xander, ready to strike at any given moment. Xander had however noticed that a person was circling him, he turned to her, holding his wooden stake and tossing it from his right hand to his left hand, moving into a boxing position.

"Come on chick, make a move."

A small chuckle arose from the darkness along with a silhouette of the girls figure.

"Please, did you just call me chick?" Artemis' voice was her normal mocking way but that changed to a dark, demented, hateful whisper echoing in Xander's ears. "Prepare to never see the light again you foolish human." Shadows began to dance beneath him, enjoying their time to play. Artemis' eyes glinted in the color of blood as she emerged from the darkness. As she had said, this human was very stupid or going blind. She had circled him at least three times in plain view and it wasn't until she retreated to the 'warm' comfort of the darkness did he notice her. He would pay with his life for this ignorance.

The shadows beneath him began to crawl to his legs, binding him to the ground. By this time "Shadow Walker" was only about five feet away from the man, awaiting to hear his screams of horror. To her it was sheer pleasure.

Chris looked around, his eyes returning to its normal color, noticing Artemis through the darkness who was hunting an almost clueless Xander.

"Stop right there, girl. The battles over." he says in a cold dark tone.

"Over?" Artemis giggled. Chris tugged on her arm, pulling her out of the shadows and into the light of the warehouse before laughing himself, revealing his fangs, a bottom one missing. Chris's laughing causes a shock of seriousness to pulse through Artemis's veins.

"As my friend Jane over there once told me, Vampires can only die from three things: Decapitation, Incineration and Loss of Blood." Chris smiles, he knew she was a vampire. But he had been personally aching to try something for months.  
Chris gives one last smirk and bites down on Artemis's jugular, blood shooting and pouring out as she gasps for life, she grabs onto Chris's collar before her hands fall lifeless. Chris unbuttons her shirt and licks the line of blood that had gone down her breasts.

"Sucks, I thought you were cute, and probably good in bed." Chris says, tossing her dead body to the side as it burns to ash and helping Xander up from the ground.

"Thanks buddy, I owe you one." Xander says smiling, Chris smiles back and looks up into the shadows where Matrix and Maxor hide and grins.

"Let that be a lesson to you. This fight is over, leave or die." he shouts to them, before a burst of bright lights beam in through the windows, the sound of a helicopter over head and the words from a megaphone on the outside of the warehouse.

"This is the police, we have the building surrounded. Come out with your hands up." the voice says. Chris remembers that's why they were messaged to wear masks. The cops had actually been sitting outside throughout the duration of the battle, but nobody had bothered to notice. Chris looks back at Viper, Sizzle, Xander, Kenny and Jane.

"Stay in the shadows. I'll take care of this." Chris says, they all nod. Chris walks out the front door of the warehouse, stepping out to multiple cop and SWAT cars and officers with their guns locked and loaded.

"Alright, You got me." Chris says smirking, he looks and through the bright lights being shined on him see's the human girl who was before sitting in the passenger seat of his car, her blonde hair blowing in the wind and tears falling down her cheeks. He walks into the light and kneels on the ground, softly placing the pistol he had in his hand in the mud in front of him. As he does, a large group of officers walk up behind him, yanking him into the mud and placing him in cuffs before pulling him back up onto his feet.

"Get the fuck up, you piece of shit." one of the officers comments. Chris does as so and complying, walks towards the police car when he notices a bright blue object flying through the air and getting ever closer to them, before he can make out what it is, the box-like object flies just over his head, knocking off the siren lights from one of the SWAT vehicles.

"What the fuck was that?" one of the officers asks confusingly.

"A police box." Chris comments.

"Never mind that, We have issues at hand!" a somewhat large and bulky officer says. Chris looks at the officer. He's wearing a cap with a visor, on his shirt, a small badge that reads "Police Chief". The Chief looks down at Chris in disgust and points towards the pickup truck towards the forest.

"Take him over there, we ask a few questions while the team scouts the warehouse and then we leave to the station." the Chief asks. The officers nod and begin dragging Chris to the pick-up. Chris looks over and sees the girl yet again, she looks at him worryingly. He stares into her bright blue eyes and smiles trying to comfort her.

"Don't worry, Sherry. I'll be out of this soon."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever you say so buddy. Try to pass that by in court." one of the officers replies to his comment. The officers throw him into the back of the truck as the Chief walks back around and stares into Chris's eyes.

"You don't look like a serial killer. But they never do, now do they?" the chief says.

"Maybe because I'm not a mass-murderer like your SWAT team is making me out to be." Chris replies. He knows he could easily break through these brass handcuffs, but decides to play along. That's when the Chief turns his attention to a rookie officer who tries to keep his distance from Chris. The rookie looks at the chief nervously.

"Report?"

"Uh, yes sir... There doesn't seem to be any bodies in the warehouse - there is just large piles of ash scattered throughout." the rookie is sweating throughout, expecting the Chief to freak out on him.

"What?" the chief shouts. "Tell them to keep looking!" he adds. The rookie runs back to the warehouse, the chief leans on the side of the truck.

"Where are the bodies?"

"I wouldn't know. I didn't see any bodies." Chris adds.

"Don't play shit games with me!" the Chief shouts at Chris. "I got over twelve calls at the station today reporting that a group of people were biting others, so tell me. What kind of cult do you belong to?"

"Cult?" Chris laughs under his breath.

"You're laughing? What kind of sick fuck bites his victims?" the police chief asks.

"This kind!" a voice emits from behind the Chief, he turns around to see a young male of around 13 years old, and slightly overweight with brown hair but pure white eyes, most notably, his skin is decaying, next to him as well is a female of around the same age, a few inches shorter than him and slightly underweight with blonde hair again pure white eyes and decaying skin. Chris backs up in the truck, the creatures disturb him in that the area around their mouths has decayed to the point that their teeth are showing, making their mouths forever frozen in a sort of evil grin.

"Who the he-" the chief is interrupted when the two grab onto him and begin biting and tearing at his flesh. Chris watches as they feed on him. "Some new sort of zombie? But, they're intelligent. It's not possible." Chris thinks to himself, terrified.

"IT'S FEEDING TIME, BOYS!" the boy exclaims aloud, as he does so, a large group of almost fifty zombies emit from the woods and begin their feast on the police forces, pushing them back into the warehouse. Chris breaks free from the handcuffs and jumps out of the truck, running through the chaos, he grabs hold of Sherry's hand and the two of them run into the warehouse, followed closely by the officers and the unending and starving horde of undead. Chris runs through the back door, there he see's his 68 Impala, but the other vehicles are gone. "Thank god, they left." he thinks to himself, before opening the door and driving off with Sherry.

"I have to admit Cas' - old guys remind me of KFC with all the flabby skin." the zombie boy says, feasting on the chief.

"Nah, Try African-American sometime, Will. You really get the grease out of those ones." the zombie girl replies feasting on one of the many SWAT officers.

Will looks up noticing the warehouse and the horde rushing in.

"Do you think we should join in on the feast?" Will questions.

"Sure. I guess." Cas' responds, not sure if they should intervene in the messy feast that will occur in the warehouse.

"There's only two things that I miss about when we were human; kissing and fucking. Other than that, we might as well be dead. I mean, I can still hold a blunt in my teeth, I can still taste the bite of a bottle of vodka and don't get me started on eating." Will says, lifting himself up from the ground and looking at the remains of the Chief. "Poor fat bastard tasted delicious." He thinks to himself.

"Could go for a good fuck myself." Cas' responds, the two laugh at her comment as they begin their short-lived trek into the warehouse. As they walk in, they see the horde has pretty much finished off the entire police force. Will sighs in disappointment, holding Cas's hand.

"Please, tell me you saved a piece." he says. When he looks, he notices a severed arm thrown his way. He grabs it and waves in recognition at the undead who threw it, Will and Cas' decidingly begin to tear at the hand together as a way of showing affection when Will notices a slight beeping sound. He turns his attention to it and tries to figure out it's source.

"Does anyone know what that beeping sou-" Will is unable to finish speaking before the warehouse explodes into flames, destroying the vehicles around it and the zombies inside, with the exception of Will and Cas', with the liberty of having lost a few limbs, they emerge from the rubble and look into the night sky, Will stares into Cas's cold dead eyes and says;

"You know what smells worse than decaying flesh? Cooked decaying flesh."

**Gregg's Bar and Grill, New York - 8:54pm**

Jack and Felicity walked into the bar where they were to meet up with Duke Nukem and took a good look around, dissapointed to see that he was nowhere to be found.

"Must be late." Jack says, finding him and a Felicity seat and checking his phone for any text messages. None. Jack sighs and closes his eyes, a waiter walks up to them.

"Hello, Welcome to Gregg's Bar and Grill. I'm Todd, I'll be your waiter today. Would you like anything to eat or drink?" the waiter asks politely.

Jack looks at the waiter and pauses for a second, then snaps back.

"I'll have a large cheeseburger and a glass of rye." Jack says.

"I'll have the same, but make that water please." Felicity adds.

Jack looks around, just as he does. Duke himself walks into the bar, a large muscular figure with blonde flat-top hair, thick-rim sunglasses, a red muscle shirt with two clips of ammunition connected to his belt, as he enters, everyone shifts and stares at him in awe. Duke looks at them and remarks.

"What the hell are you all looking at?"

Duke works his way over to Jack's table casually, Jack and Felicity get up, and Jack takes the time to introduce the two.

"Duke, this is my wife Felicity - and I'm pretty sure she already knows you." Jack says.

"Hi. I've been a fan of you for such a long time..." Felicity spits out. Duke isn't surprised at all, he's heard thousands of people say that if not more than that. Jack however is quite surprised, he never knew Felicity even liked Duke.

Duke had always been an icon of pure-American masculinity and Felicity wasn't really big into masculinity... or guys for that matter. It was just a stroke of luck that Jack was up Felicity's isle. It probably had to do more with their first meeting at this same Bar and Grill back when it was more so a night club.

"Anyways, Duke. How's it been going?" Jack asks.

"What can I say? Fame pays for itself." Duke comments.

"You did save the world." Jack adds.

Duke however has kept losing focus on Felicity and Jack, it came as no surprise, since their conversation was quite boring and more a loss of words, however it was more than that. Duke had seen someone or something in the corners of his eyes. He looks at them, they ARE boring, he's fought aliens, saved chicks, probably got laid more than anyone else on earth, and these were just two average boring middle-class citizens. Duke looks at the door then back at Jack.

"I'll be back, gotta piss on a squirrel or something." he says jokingly.

"Yeah, go right ahead." Jack says nervously, trying to keep his cool around him.

Duke walks out of through the back staircase and into the alleyway, when he hears Jack freaking out from inside the bar about how he just was talking to the Duke Nukem. Duke sighs when he notices a shadowy figure. Blonde slicked hair with shades and wearing a black suit. The suited man shoots Duke a look, and before Duke can notice, a large man with combed orange hair grabs him from behind. "I knew I should've taken my 'Roids today." he thinks to himself just as he receives one punch - two - three punches to the face from this blonde man.

He know he's heard of this asshole before. He just can't recall where. Something to do with biological doo-hickey. The point was, he was beating up the Duke Nukem. Nobody beats up the Duke Nukem. Duke has enough, he breaks free of the redhead's grasp and kicks him across the alley. Albert Wesker. That's the name that's been slipping him. They stare at each other, through their sunglasses - despite the fact that it was already past nine and there was no sun to be seen. Duke makes the first move throwing punches at Wesker's stomach, but only landing two. However, those two are sufficient, as Wesker's fast mobility is slightly tampered by the superhuman punches Duke laid on him. Wesker kicks Duke sending him in the air, but Duke lands on his feet, Duke charges at Wesker, who backs up and dodges almost every punch except one - but the tides are slightly turned as Duke twist kicks Wesker in the face - slamming him into the wall and knocking his glasses into the busy street outside the alleyway.

Duke wipes himself off. Of course he won - why wouldn't he? "Time to go back inside for a real piss this time." he thinks to himself just when he notices that the redhead he kicked earlier has gotten his ass off the ground, which would be perfectly acceptable if it weren't for the fact that when the dude was kicked across the alley it was enough of an impact to kill a person. The redhead opens his eyes, they are a pure white, the man slowly shambles towards Duke unleashing a heavy moan as he did so. "Fuck this." Duke thinks to himself.

**9:18pm**  
Jack looks around. He's had enough of waiting for Duke. He was hoping that he was getting a blow-job in the bath stalls by a cute girl, or he just had bad diarrhea or maybe he was off saving the world from aliens again. But, he wasn't sure and he wanted to know. Jack got up, and walks through the door past the staircase like Duke did. "Of course, he didn't go to washroom, he actually went to urinate on a fluffy brown rodent." Jack thinks to himself. He walks out into the alleyway, Felicity behind him, and when they walk out, they are startled to find that Duke is nowhere around. Jack continues to walk down the alleyway when he notices a puddle. Blood. "Okay, he was fighting aliens." Jack continued down the alleyway when he seen the tall blonde haired shadowy figure.

"Excuse me, sir?" Jack says, raising his hand in an attempt to grab the man's shoulders. He didn't respond, he's probably homeless or something, but if Duke was anywhere, this man would obviously know.

Jack places his hand on the mans shoulder when the man turns his head around fiercely, revealing his cat-like eyes. He grabs Jack and with super human strength tosses him across the alley and into a dumpster before pretty much teleporting up a wall and from building to building.

"Jack!" Felicity had screamed as Jack had just regained consciousness.

"Thank god, you're okay!" she continues, kissing him on the forehead.

"Wh-where's that guy?" Jack asks confused.

"He's gone. Come on, let's get you home."

"What about Duke?" Jack mentions.

"Come on Jack, Duke can take care of himself, you know that. He saved the earth remember?" Felicity added.

"Yeah.. I guess you're right."

The two walk out of the alleyway and into the street, it is jam packed with cars, which actually is unusual. They continue walking, what would be the point in taking a cab? It'd be pretty useless about now. They continue down a few blocks, all jammed with cars. Obviously, these people were in a rush to get to something. Must be the new iPhone or something, Jack assumes.

Eventually, they reach the front door of their house, they go upstairs and get ready for sleep. It'd had already been a long day before all that had happened at the bar. Jack had to get ready for work the next day. Jack jumps into the shower, turning the water to just the right temperature and stepping out smelling beautifully fresh, a heck of a lot better than he did coming out of the dumpster. He walks into the bedroom, there is a nice view of the suburban neighborhood around them. It'd be a great sleep tonight. Jack crawls into bed and looks over at Felicity.

"I love you." Jack says, staring at her, looking into her eyes and runs his thumb along her lips before he moves in and kisses them. She presses herself to her and they begin making out passionately as he climbs on top of her and she screams and moans in pleasure, grasping onto his body as if it provided some sort of security before the two laid back down and fell asleep. What Jack hadn't noticed was that everything he thought he knew was about to come to an end, regardless if he wanted it to or not.


	2. Chapter 2: Alone In The Mall

**Russo Inn, Raccoon City - September 22nd, 8:43pm -**

William Kennedy was lying down on his bed in a small apartment in the urban part of Raccoon City. The apartment was cheap, the wallpaper was ripped, torn and falling off, the ceiling was covered in dirt and spider webs, and everything aside from the bed was filthy. It wasn't necessarily the life for a 14 year old to live, but he got by. He tossed in the bed and looked at the clock that now read 8:43 pm. It was obvious from the dark sky outside that summer had come to a close and winter was not far off.

William was never religious, heck, he tried to put his faith in god, but there were no signs or proof. Nothing, all of the textbooks and history he had read only pointed to evolution, adaptation, natural selection, existential nihilism and eventually the apathetic pointless view of life, where we all just rot in the ground when we die.

The TV blabbered on. It was nothing interesting, just the news talking about a rat infestation in the sewers. It didn't bother him, he had always had to deal with rats, he'd constantly set traps and pray to whatever he believed in that he wouldn't accidentally step on one.

William's parental guardians had died just over a year ago, they were researchers at the Umbrella Nuclear Plant who had been in some sort of accident with a steel beam, William didn't believe it. With no support, he was forced to take care of himself. At school, he wasn't very popular and had hardly any friends, he simply got by doing the work assigned to him. Raccoon City was never as peaceful as he had hoped, nor as much as Umbrella made it out to be. Constantly watching his back had become a habit. William rose out of bed, grabbing his trusty 44. magnum revolver from the drawer and attaching it to his belt holster, putting on his favourite shirt to cover it and heading out.

**Amsdell Mall - 2 miles south of Raccoon Forest**

The mall was intensely crowded. Before, the mall had gotten hardly any customers due to it's location away from the city and due to the gruesome murders that had occurred in the nearby forest not more than three months ago. That was when the chief of police, Brian Irons, sent the special forces unit S.T.A.R.S into the forest to investigate a large number of reports of cannibalistic murders. Only five of the twelve-manned S.T.A.R.S unit returned, Alpha Team's Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Brad Vickers, and Bravo Team's Rebecca Chambers.

While Barry and Rebecca quickly retired from S.T.A.R.S, returned to their families and moved, Chris and Jill confronted the police and the media under claims that the pharmaceutical enterprise, Umbrella - had been conducting experiments on humans and animals in the infamous Spencer's Mansion. Named after Umbrella founder, Ozwell E. Spencer and designed by world-renowned architect George Trevor. The police denied any knowledge of the incident and reported Jill and Chris as "insane". Shortly after, Chris disappeared.

But for some reason, on this particular day, the mall was crowded, possibly due to the fact that Raccoon City's biggest mall "Raccoon Mall" was shut down for the day with "Public Health and Safety" being the only reason. Enough as that was to convince people to move to the next available mall. Amsdell Mall was open from 4 am to 12 am. All the more people would be rushing in to prepare for the winter, stocking up on food and supplies. Especially winter tires. Unusual for a city as south as Raccoon, Winter is harsh for Raccoon, mainly because of the Raccoon Mountains. The only thing good about Raccoon's winters was the Skii Resort, other than that, you might as well be visiting Greenland.

As William walked into the mall, he felt a sight of relief and plopped himself down on a bench near the East entrance. Looking around at the various individuals popping in and out of the mall.

One of these individuals is young 23 year old Blair Natasha. Blair walked into the mall casually, however a bit more lazy then so, she pushed her long silk blonde hair back, Blair had deep blue eyes and was wearing a blue t-shirt with the name of her favourite brand printed onto it. She was always complimented for being beautiful, and her perfect body shape made her a target for guys. She sighed and she looked around, not seeing anyone she knew and walked up to a fast food court.

Outside, it was dark and the sky was covered in stars. The moon was a ball of cheese in the sky, it glowed an orangish-yellow tint. Blair went up to one of the counters in the food court

and ordered a sub and a drink, pulling out her pink wallet from her skinny jeans and pulling out a five dollar bill to pay. Looking around, she could very easily tell the mall was crowded. So she decided to sit down on a nearby bnch and eat sat down and then heard a noise from behind her The noise bothered her, she slowly turned her head and saw nothing. "It's the night getting to me." she thought to herself.

Leon Lockheart was busy checking out the sporting goods store across from the food court. Leon was a bold guy, it could be told by the time he and his friends went skydiving, his parachute failed and he managed to still enjoy it and have fun, even though he ended up with a broken bone - or two. Leon at the current moment wasn't anyone of peak interest, to others, he was just some guy looking over the camping gear, getting ready to go on a trip with some friends.

"Geez, I can find better stuff on eBay." Leon commented.

Leon pulled himself up off of the floor, he figured he would find some more things at another store. He walked over to the cash register, pulled out his credit card and handed it to the cashier. After typing in his PIN he grabbed his receipt and bags and left. Walking out of the store, his stomach growled and he looked over at the food court. "A bite to eat wouldn't hurt now would it?" He thought to himself as he went on his way over to the food court. "Damn, I hate this place tonight - too damn crowded." Just at that very thought, he heard a noise emit from behind him.

Leon turned to see what it was, but there was nothing. Just a lot of people and hardly anyone noticed it.

"Man, this place is weird." he whispered to himself, walking up to the counter of a various food place and ordering a hot dog and coke. Leon paid for the meal, waited, then grabbed his food and left, finding a table to sit down at. Thankfully, it didn't take him long, but before he could bite into his hot dog, another sound emitted from the same place only louder.

"What the hell was that?" Leon exclaimed, looking quite a bit concerned. It sounded like a scream. Blair had heard the sound and jumped in fright, she looked around and saw no one hurt. She looked around at the people in the mall and then turned her head to her left and saw a gruesome image from inside the store. There was a man eating a woman's arm. Blair screamed and backed away from the the bench she was sitting at. William was ironically also in the food court as this occurred, but not close enough to Blair to have an accurate idea of what was going on, then he heard the scream. It was blood curling, sending chills down his back. Somebody's life had just been taken horribly, the sound of somebody gurgling blood in their throat as they screamed was just the most horrible idea. He instantly ran over to the store to see the man biting and tearing at a woman's arm and even almost ripping it off. Leon looked around and didn't see anybody, "What the heck is going on?" he thought. Then, he looked to see Blair backing away from the store. But before he could ask himself what was going on, he looked in the store to see one person apparently eating another.

"What in gods name is th..."

But before Leon could finish talking, more screams came from various stores all over the mall as more people were basically being eaten by one another.

"What the fuck is going on here?" Leon muttered to himself.

William, as shocked as he was by these violent occurrences knew only one thing could be done, he ran up to the store where Leon was idly standing by. Immediately, he pulled out his .44 caliber and began firing at the men that were attacking others. Before hearing more screams from behind him at the food court where he was sitting not even moments earlier.

"What the hell? I shot this guy six fucking times! A full fucking round!" he shouted in confusion at the men that were now shambling their way towards William, he turned around to see Blair, Leon, and many random civilians just staring and frozen in shock.

"What the hell are you guys doing? Get the hell out of here!" William yelled at them. Blair was so shocked from the horrible sight she just witnessed, she was hardly able to keep her balance. Blood made her sick to her stomach. She looked at Leon then at William, she was extremely dizzy, but kept standing.

"I... I don't know..." was all she could say.

She looked back into the store and one of the attackers was walking out the door and towards them, very slow, almost shambling, his clothes weren't necessarily torn, but it was obvious something had happened to him, as there was a large amount of blood that had looked like it came from the man's neck. William looked at Blair, who - at this point anyways, was now becoming very dizzy and dozing off constantly. Trying desperately to keep balance. William managed to catch her from falling.

"Damn... are you okay?" he asked Blair, she blinked a few times, widening her eyes and looking at the boy who was holding her up.

"Yeah, that's just really - gross. What is that?" she stared at the man shambling towards them.

"I don't know... it appears to be dead." Leon commented to the young woman, staring at the being that was still continuing after them. He watched as the "thing" approached them, a cold dead look on its' face.

"I suggest we get out of here." Leon added. He turned to see where those things were gathered and where they weren't and noticed a store that seemed to be clear.

"Over there." he said, pointing at the store as the things shambled closer to them, Leon picked up a chair from the food court and rammed the zombie into one of the fountains.

"Lets go." Leon added, heading for the store, William and Blair following. William shoots him a look.

"You better have some sort of plan, I'm not leaving until I am finished my mission."

Blair followed Leon and William into the store. It looked like there was nothing in there of any use. She stayed silent and walked quietly. She didn't want to set William and Leon off or anything. "Hmm. I don't like them though, I know that much." She looked at William, who was around a good four inches taller than her.

"A mission?" she mumbled confusingly.

Leon entered the store first and noticed nothing was in there to use as a weapon, he looked at William in confusion. "Mission? What's with this boy... and what's with the Revolver? Man, this country is going down the drain." Leon thought. Closing the gate to the store. It was now their refuge, but they were unfortunately forced to watch as the things devoured everyone else. Leon looks over towards the food court at the groups of overweight individuals who were being eaten.

"Poor saps, it was an all you can eat buffet tonight."

Blair looked at the man "A what?" she was starting to get confused. Too confused. Leon looked at the young woman, he knew she was confused, he couldn't blame her, he was too.

"Well, this sounds crazy even to me, but those things - they look like zombies." he said, still searching the store for any sort of weapons.

"What the hell, Zombies? What do you think this is, a horror movie?" William exclaimed.

Zack ran to the mall, hoping he would have enough time to buy all the supplies he needed. It was already dark out and Zack didn't know what time the mall closed. He walked towards the entrance and noticed a man sitting on a bench. He wasn't moving. "Probably a homeless." he thought to himself. His clothes were torn up and dirty, and he smelt disgusting. He looked back and was surprised to see the homeless man stumbling after him. Zack raised his head and noticed the smell was of decaying flesh. He couldn't help but watch in horror as the thing stepped closer to him, raising it's arms and moaning hungrily.

Zack ran into the mall to escape the attacker to find the mall in chaos, he had noticed that three people had taken shelter in a store and decided he'd do the same, he pushed one of the decaying attackers away from him and ran into the nearest store, which happened to be a lingerie store. He quickly brought down the gate to the entrance and ran to the corner of the room sinking to the floor, avoiding the eyes that were watching him. He breathed in deeply and tried to relax. "That was a zombie." he thought to himself. He'd seen enough zombie movies to recognize a zombie when it was about to eat him. Zack looked up and ran back out into the open food court of the mall, using the little training he had in parkour to avoid the hands that were grabbing at him, he ran into the sporting goods store that Leon had originally be there, walked up to a display case and broke the glass, as he did a man shouted at him, obviously the owner of the store.

"Get the hell out of there!" the man shouted at Zack. Zack held up a knife in his trembling hand at the man and shouted back.

"Lower the gate!"

"No." the man replied simply.

"The get the fuck out!" Zack screamed and took a few steps closer to the man.

"Alright, I'll go!" the man replied back startled, walking towards the entrance to the store.

"Where are the keys to the gate?" Zack asked.

"Here." the man answered, tossing Zack the keys. Zack shot the man a look and he ran out of the store and into the distance, Zack brought the gate down and locked it. He sat down and tried to calm himself.

Leon ran to the entrance of the store they were hiding in, they didn't have the keys to lock the gate, but he was pretty sure the zombies weren't smart enough to open it. He walked to the back of the store and sat against the wall, trying to think. All he had with him was his backpack that had some souvenirs for his friend's kids. He opened it up and pulled out a granola bar, he looked at the others and offered it to them instead.

"You guys want one?" he asked them

"I guess, if that's all you have. By the way, Introductions. My name is William." William answered, wiping the sweat off his face.

"Sure, here you go. - I'm Leon." said Leon, handing over the granola bar to William. William placed his 44. magnum to the side and took the granola bar from Leon. Leon looked over at Blair and smiled, he reached into his bag and pulled out another and showed it to the woman.

"I have two more." he said to the young lady. He looked around past the gate and saw that someone else was alive across the way in the sporting goods. William began to open the wrapper to the bar and looked at it. The bar was dipped in chocolate and had a nice "oozing" flavor. After finishing eating the bar, he noticed a few words printed on the inside of the wrapper which read "Courtesy of Umbrella Inc."

"Umbrella?" he mumbled to himself while eating.

Zack could still hear screaming and tried to block it out, he walked around th store and found a hunting gun in the display glass, he tried some of the keys on the key ring and found the right one. He opened it and felt huge relief as he lifted the heavy gun out of the case. He checked the label and saw the name and info on the gun.

"Tikka T3 Varmint, holds 5 rounds, 6 lbs, 10 oz, blah, blah, blah" he read out loud.

Zack sighed and looked around for more ammunition. He found a box of rounds and checked it. There were ten rounds in the box. He didn't find anymore things of use in the store, but knew there must have been more supplies in the back. After searching through some boxes, he found a small box that had a Rifle Stock Ammo Carrier. He pulled it out and attached it to the rifle. He took the box of bullets out and put 5 bullets in the ammo carrier. After experimenting with the gun for a while, he was able to open it and load the remaining 5 bullets into the gun. Next to the box he found a holster for the rifle. He put it on, but still held on tightly to the gun, not wanting to let go of it.

Zack moved a box of basketballs out of the way and his face lit up as he saw a box labelled "Crossbows". He looked inside and found three boxes he took them out and opened them, one box was empty, but the other two had crossbows with laser sight. He pulled one out and searched for some arrows. He had found another small box with fifty arrows inside. In the same box he found some crossbow bolt case. Each case held twelve rounds and Zack used four of them. He put one in each of the cross bows and put the cases in his coat pockets, he holstered his rifle and continued to search for more ammo and supplies. A few minutes later, Zack walked back inside the store and noticed the screaming had stopped.

Zack put the other crossbow next to the register and walked around the store some more, looking for anything else that might be hidden inside.

Blair looked at Leon and then at the granola bar. "No thanks, I just had a entire submarine sandwich, I'm stuffed and couldn't possibly eat a granola bar." She smiled at him.

"But, thanks anyways. I'm Blair." she added.

"No problem." he said putting it back into his pack. Leon got up and walked over to the gate and noticed the person in the sporting goods store was stocking up. He also noticed that the screams had pretty much stopped and the mall had gone quiet. "Did they get everyone except us?" he wondered. He decided to shout out at the man across the way, hoping not to attract the zombies attention.

"Hey buddy! You in the sporting goods! Are you alright?" Leon shouted.

Zack couldn't find anything else and decided to just sit down where the zombies couldn't see him. He hadn't seen one in a while, but the ones he had seen just kept going, not bothering with him. Zack could still hear slight screaming but it was so distant he could hardly hear it unless he really listened. He looked as Leon called at him. Zack got up and saw he was with a girl and a young boy. Zack just nodded and sat back down. He didn't want to attract one of those things.

"Good." whispered Leon. Leon looked around and noticed the very little number of zombies just shambling around looking for more. "There has to be a way out of here." he thought, stepping away from the gate and looking for a way out. Suddenly, Leon looked at the back of the store and noticed a door to a storage room. "There may be something we can forge weapons out of - or it may even possibly be the back maintenance corridors through the mall." He walked over to the door and looked back at the other two.

"Listen, I'm going to check to see if there is a way out or a way to defend ourselves. Stay here and don't open this door, alright?" he said, opening the door slowly. He looked inside and noticed it was a small storage room like he had thought, but unfortunately there was nothing in it of use. Thankfully however, there was another set of doors, those probably led to the maintenance halls. He looked back to see that Blair had fallen asleep, William had nodded in agreement. Leon closed the door behind him and head to the other door, he opened it and saw a sign that had arrows pointed two directions the one read Trash and Disposal, the other read Security and Maintenance. He heard faint moaning coming from the direction of Trash and

Disposal. "Better not go that way." Leon thought to himself. He had to take the chance of the Security and Maintenance and closed the other door behind him and slowly started down the

long hallway, lit up and tinted blue from the moonlight that had shined brightly through the windows, the lights above him had mostly been burnt out, a few flickered. "Of course, the maintenance folk here obviously don't do their job." The flickering lights had creeped him out, alongside the distant moans from the other direction.

William looked at Zack who was just sitting in the sporting goods store across the ways and then at Blair who had fallen asleep and was leaning on William's shoulders and holding onto his arm, he didn't mind it. He knew Blair couldn't be much more than four years older than him. William lightly sighed and looked at the ceiling "Man, what a day this turned out to be." William reached over and pulled a book out of his backpack and began reading, looking at Blair and straightening her hair at times. "Leon will be back soon. I know it."

Then, William was startled by a scream from nearby, he immediately got up and looked outside through the gate to see a young girl, she had short dirty blonde hair, and was wearing what looked like a Japanese school or sailor uniform. She was only about four foot eight or so and looked like an eight year old even though she was twelve.

William knew her well, infact - they had dated a few months back, despite the two year age difference. But that was behind him. Now, it was all about survival. He grabbed his 44. magnum and left the store, closing the gate behind him so those things couldn't get to the sleeping Blair. William ran towards the girl who was cornered near the entrance. William began firing at the undead but wasted all the bullets not even managing to kill one. With a dramatic leap, he was able to reach her, but as he reached in his pocket to reload, he noticed something. "Shit, I'm all out."

He had apparently, amongst the rush forgot that he left his other rounds in his bag which was still in the store.

"Fuck." he said as the zombies closed in on him and the girl he was trying to protect. Zack however had watched as the whole series of events had unfolded. He was surprised to see that the kid was shooting the zombies. His first thought was that the kid was crazy. His second thought was that the girl and the boy were both screwed because they were being surrounded by zombies and he could see more stumbling towards them. Zack had no idea how to even shoot a gun, so he wasn't about to go out there. So Zack decided to try and distract them, he ran and grabbed a metal baseball bat that was lying on the floor. He ran back to the gate and started to hit the gate with the bat, shouting loudly so that the zombies would turn their attention to him. The ones that were closer to Zack started to stagger towards him. He kept on shouting until a zombie started to bang on the gate, moaning hungrily.

Zack backed up and grabbed his crossbows, more zombies came and started to bang on the gate, a few seconds later and he couldn't even see the other store that the woman was in. All he could see was the zombies banging on the gate, he had just hoped that the gate would hold. William had been idle almost the entire time. His first thoughts were "Now that Leon is probably food and Blair is sleeping beauty, that guy is probably the only person with any sanity left." Immediately he realized there were a few large vents in the Jewelry Store next to the Sporting Goods that Zack was now trapped in. William ran over to the vents, the girl alongside him and broke off the cover, crawling into it and making sure to block the vent entrance behind them to ensure no zombies could crawl through. Zack had grabbed all his weapons and was towards the back of the room. He hadn't noticed the vent in the wall that the two were crawling out of. It was hidden by an empty box that Zack had pushed out of the way to create a barricade.

"What the hell are you two doing? I distract the zombies and you come running back to them? You should've just ran back to the store with the other two!" he ranted angrily to them. Zack paused, remembering the zombies banging against the gate. "Come on, lets go." he said as he ran to the back of the store. He unlocked the door at the back and pushed them both inside.

"You're lucky I saw you two. This door locks when I close it. You would've been trapped in the store with the zombies."

Zack looked around and found a door in the back of the storage room, he opened it and screamed in surprise as a body fell to the floor in front of them. He nudged it with his shoe, aiming one of the crossbows in his hand at it's skull. It didn't move, so Zack looked down the hall to see if there were any zombies. He didn't see any but he could hear them.

"Do you guys have any weapons on you?" he asked.

"And what are your names?" he added, looking back to see if they were still there.

"My name's William. This is Sherry." William answered.

"Okay, and the weapons?" Zack asked again.

"I left my magnum behind at the entrance. It's useless now, there's no ammo. Sherry doesn't have any weapons either- I'm pretty sure there's another hunting shop nearby if we're ever in the need for weapons or ammunition." William explained.

"Well -" Zack started. "Since you had a magnum. I'm guessing you can use a crossbow. There's laser sight on it, so just aim at one of those thing's heart or lungs - something. I don't know, just aim. Okay?" Zack said handing William the crossbow.

"You will need to reload every time you fire. You can only fit one arrow in there at a time. Try to conserve ammo. There must be hundreds of these things in this mall. Here -" he said handing William a bolt case.

"There's twelve arrows inside."

Zack looked at Sherry and handed her a hunting knife and giving her the holster.

"Just in case you need to use it. It might not be much, but it helps." he said to her. William sighed, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He moved behind Sherry and leaned against her, lightly holding her wrists.

"Hold it like this." He said moving her fingers to the slots on the handle of the knife.

"Now, bend your arms..."

Sherry followed his instruction, she was sort of uncomfortable, not just because she was only around half of William's height, but because she and William hadn't been that close since they broke up. But she still had feelings for him. Sherry never really had any friends due to her appearance of an eight year old, and her parents worked at the Umbrella Chemical Plant which was just outside of town. Thus, she was alone, much like William - who made a living in a run-down apartment, with no family, just himself. So the two used to spend lots of time and late nights together.

"Just like that." William said.

Sherry closed her eyes and slightly smiled as William helped show her how to swing the knife, which made a light swooshing sound. Then the moment was interrupted by the sound of slippery feet that made a mushing sound with every step. Everyone became quiet as the sound of mushy footsteps came about, the few stared down the dark blue maintenance hall. William aimed his crossbow. The footsteps reached the farthest windows, showing the shape of a disfigured human silhouette shambling towards them. William waited for it to be fully visible then aimed at the thing's heart. The bow slung forward, a beautiful sound, then the sound as the bow pierced through the body of the creature and came out the other side. But to his dismay, the creature got back up off of the ground, slowly, but it did.

"What the hell?" William mumbled, the creature was back on it's feet.

William starting to panic and shot another bow at it's chest. But at that point, the zombie lunged out and knocked William to the side, William managed to knock it off its feet and with a last grown of pure hunger. William stepped on the creature's chest and shot a bow right in the middle of it's forehead, pinning the creature to the ground, finally inanimate.

Zack lowered William's crossbow.

"Okay then, go for head shots. Reload the crossbow, William. You never know when another one may show." Zack said, looking down the hallway and starting forward.

"William, stay next to me. Sherry stay behind us and make sure nothing sneaks up behind us. If something does, William and I will take care of it. Okay?" he asked.

As Leon walked down the creepy corridor, he could hear faint sounds of all kinds of action happening in the mall. "Maybe I should go back and make sure everyone is alright - but there may be something here." He thought, Arguing with himself while continuing down the path. Leon comes up to a set of double doors and heard moaning from the other side and the sound of flesh being eaten.

"Shit."

All of a sudden, the moaning got louder and Leon heard the sound of shuffling towards the door, Leon looked for a weapon, but then stopped in realization.

"The door." he whispered with a small grin.

As the sounds got louder, Lean positioned himself in front of the double doors and got ready, when he heard them banging against the door, he spun around and did a back spin kick on the door with all of his might. The doors flung open, throwing the creatures to the floor, there were three of them and they appeared to be in the middle of tearing a police officer apart.

"Excellent." Leon whispered.

Running over to the police officer, he noticed the man's firearm was still in it's holster. As the creatures stumbled to get up, Leon pulled out the Beretta and aimed it at the creatures. Leon pulled the trigger and planted the bullet in the creatures chest. The zombie only paused for a moment, then continued. Leon stepped back away from the other two who were almost surrounding him.

Leon thought for a moment. "Damn these things don't die... Come on, they're zombies. What was the best way? - The head." Leon snapped back and noticed all three zombies up and stumbling towards him. He backed up and aimed the firearm and not even a second later fired a round into the closest zombie on his left. It dropped motionless on the floor.

Leon smiled and re-aimed the weapon. This time firing two more shots, dropping the other two. He took a moment to relax and decided to go back for the others, but before he did, the cop on the ground had started to twitch. Leon walked over to the dead cop, keeping his distance.

"Sorry, buddy" said Leon, aiming the gun at the cop's head as it opened it's eyes. "-But you're just going to cause me problems later." and with that said, he fired a shot into the cops head. Leon turned around and began to run down the hallway back to the store and the others.

"God, I hope they're okay." he thought. He thought about his encounter with the undead officer. Thank god for friends in the police force." he thought.

Blair was sitting down, asleep. She woke up when she heard something bang open, she jumped up and then sighed in relief.

"Wow." she looked around and noticed she was the only one in the store. She started out the door hoping to find William, Leon - someone. She continued walking down the back hallways. Strangely, there were no zombies stalking the hall she was in. She wandered around curiously and found an emergency axe. She broke the glass with her hand and it began to bleed.

"Shit..." she whispered in pain as she held onto her hand.

"Now that was stupid." she scolded herself, she grabbed the axe, took a few practice swings and then started towards two big doors. She opened them and saw no one. She continued to walk down the hall when she heard the sound of moaning coming from her right. She jerked her heard over to see a zombie coming towards her. She raised the axe and swung. The axe sliced through the creature's neck and the head flew across the room. Blood sprayed everywhere, she ran towards the other doors She flew them open and saw Leon.

"Oh thank god, I found you..." she ran towards him and hugged him. Leon wrapped his torn sleeve around Blair's wound. The pain was terrible and unbearable. She sighed and squeezed him tighter. She looked at him, then at her hand. The wound was numbing and she just wanted to live. For that right, she'd go through anything, and when she said anything she meant it.

"I'll be fine... but if you could... I don't care.." she stopped talking, squeezed her eyes shut, stood on her toes and kissed Leon. The two unaware that a small boy was sitting on the floor up ahead of Blair and Leon, they only noticed after the slight sound of his crying had caught Blair's attention.

"Wait... wait here." Blair told Leon, moving away and opening the door in front of her slowly, there was the young boy of no older than five or six years old.

"Hello?" Blair said cautiously, not wanting to scare the little boy. However, at that moment, the exact opposite happened. The little boy had gotten up off of the ground, ran and hugged Blair tightly and began sobbing heavily.

"Hey... it's alright. You're alright. My name's Blair. What's yours?" she asked kneeling down to talk to the little boy.

"Clayton.." the little boy spoke.

Jarold had ran past a few zombies and into an abandoned store. The walls were splattered with blood. It had been the scene of a massacre. He looked around, the store by the looks of it was a clothes store. Jarold took a look at his clothes. "I could use some new ones." he thought to himself and with that thought, he took his shirt off, revealing his torso. It was in good shape. His abs were ripped and he had a good strong chest. He looked at his fists which were bloody from hitting the undead on the way over here. His pants were ripped. He went over to the shirts and pants section. He grabbed a white tank top and threw a black button up over it. He only buttoned it up halfway and he rolled the sleeves up, barely above his forearm. He grabbed a pair of pants, which looked nice, considering the old pair he had on. His shoes were fine, but he wouldn't want to ruin his new outfit with a pair of old shoes. He found a nice pair of boots and put them on. He looked in the mirror and noticed something was missing. A pair of sunglasses. He went over to the case of expensive sunglasses. The case was locked, and instead of looking for the key, shattered the glass with his fist and put the glasses on. A black pair. "Nice, now I'm ready to go." he finished and went to the entrance of the store.

William had continued down the corridor, when the sound of zombies breaking through glass had become all too apparent. William looked around, there was a small vent that Sherry could likely fit through, but it was highly unlikely that him or Zack would be able to fit through it. If they were to be overwhelmed by zombies, he couldn't take the risk of Sherry getting hurt.

She had nothing but a hunting knife, William had a crossbow and Zack had a rifle. If he could remember the layout of the mall correctly, this air vent would take Sherry across to the maintenance halls that Leon had disappeared into and that's exactly what he hoped. He took off the cover to the vent and looked down inside.

"Sherry, listen to me. Leon and Blair are down there. They'll meet up with you and keep you safe. Trust me. We'll be right over there." William explained. Zack scouted around, waiting for the zombies to show.

"William, I don't want to. I'm strong I can take care of myself, let me fight with you." Sherry begged him. William sighed he knelt down to her and brushed her hair out of her eyes with his hand.

"I know, you want to fight. But, these things - these zombies or whatever they are. They're twice your height and weight, and I can't risk you getting hurt if me and Zack are being overwhelmed. Now please, for your own sake. I promise you, no matter what, I'll meet up with you again. I promise you." William said looking down the vent and hugging Sherry. She pushes William back a bit, grabs onto his shirt collar closes her eyes and kisses him.

"We have company." Zack declares as the first zombie shambles into sight.

Sherry lets William's lips slip from hers and opens her eyes, she looks up at him as he stands, turns and readies his crossbow, firing a shot directly at the zombies head, pinning it to the wall. Sherry climbs into the vent and continues on her way through the dark.

"Forty-seven arrow's left." Zack blurts out loud. William looks at him confused. Zack looks back and see's Sherry climbing through the vent, he tries to fit himself through the vent, but it doesn't even look large enough for William to climb through. Zack looks down the vents.

"Sherry, be careful. If you find the others, give them the knife. Good luck!" Zack shouted down the vents hoping that she would hear. Zack started to walk back down the corridor, William pushing a crate in front of the vent opening. Zack turned and tried to open the three doors at the end of the corridor but they were all locked. He could hear banging from the double doors in front of them, he turned to William.

"Let's find another door. This one obviously has zombies." he said, he started kicking the nearest door when the double doors flew open.

"Shit!" Zack screamed and kicked the door in front of him open, he pushed William inside and ran in after him. He turned to close the door and saw a zombie right in front of him, he kicked it in the chest, sending it backwards. It hit the wall and Zack slammed the door shut.

Zack looked around and saw boxes of clothing everywhere. He walked forward and saw a door. He slowly pushed it open and saw someone putting on a black pair of boots and walk to the front of the store.

"Wait here." he whispered to William and walked into the store. He stayed away from the man, fearing the person would think Zack was a zombie if he sneaked up on him.

"Hey, you." Zack called out, not knowing what to say. He hoped that he had said something else because he didn't want any trouble. Jarold had raised his head when Zack called out to him. He held his hand up to signify he wasn't undead and called back out to him.

"Hey you, too." Jarold called back. "Good to see that other people made it." he thought to himself.

"Are you alright?" Zack said, trying to prove his good intent.

"Yeah, I'm fine and dandy, 'bout you?"

"Yeah. I'm doing okay. Trying to avoid those things." Zack responded.

"Do you know if there are any other survivors?" Jarold asked.

"It's only me and Zack at the moment, my girlfriend Sherry is currently in the vents working her way to the maintenance hallways. There were two others, Blair and Leon, but we don't know where they are, aside from them, I don't believe anyone else is alive." William answered, walking out into the store.

"Yeah, I saw a man and a woman in a store when I first got here." Zack added.

"That's William -" he continued, motioning towards him. "and a little girl, Sherry was with us a few minutes ago. I'm Zack." he said to Jarold.

"I'm not here for your life story, do you guys have any weapons?" Jarold asks.

"We have two crossbows and forty seven arrows. I have a rifle with ten rounds. I had three hunting knives, but Sherry took one, so I guess we only have two now." Zack answered.

"How about you?" he added. Jarold shook his head, almost in disappointment and raised his knuckles. "The only weapons, I need are my fists." he thought to himself, but he didn't want to sound like a egotistical loser or douchebag or anything so he rephrased it.

"No, I've been using my hands." he said and held up his bloody knuckles. Zack just stared at the fists in amazement and asked him.

"Well, do you need any?" Zack knew that the guy must have been tough to go through all those zombies with just his fists.

"At least a knife or something, so you can rest your hands."

William looked in the distance for signs of the undead, there was none to be found, the mall was empty but he could hear the moaning of the hordes from far off, slowly but surely moving in their direction.

"Guys, listen." he warned. They stopped. They heard the moans. Preparing to move and fight, Jarold was about to ask Zack one more question when a cold hand grabbed his shoulder from behind. He quickly grabbed it and flipped the zombie over. It was another one. He put his fist in its face, shattering it's skull.

"We gotta go." Jarold announces to William and Zack.

Leon entered the room to check on Blair and looked down to see Clayton.

"Clayton! My god, are you alright?" he said, almost in tears. Leon was sort of shocked to hear their parents were "eaten" by those things. But the biggest thing was his little brother had made it all this way alive and without injury.

Blair looked shocked. Leon seemed to know this little guy. Oh, he must be like a cousin.. she looked down at him and Leon.

"I'm so sorry.." she knew those words meant nothing, but it was all her mind could come up with. She turned her head as she got the strange feeling someone was watching her. Clayton looked up at Leon, he sighed deeply and walked next to Leon, standing next to him. He felt safer now.

"Those monsters ate my cat." he spoke softly, trying to control his emotions and be strong like his older brother.

Sherry had reach the end of the air vents and opened up the bottom. It had led into a store that she could swore she had seen when she ran by the food court and jumped in. She brushed herself off and attempted to get up, when she felt a muscle pull in her leg, she cried out in pain, she tried to get up again, this time more slowly and stumbled her way through the back into the maintenance hallway, when she turned her head, she was surprised to see Blair, Leon and Clayton were alive. She knew that she had found them because she recognized Blair from earlier as the girl who was sleeping in the store.

"Where is everyone?" Blair had wondered aloud. She looked around to see if she could see if any other survivors had come across the maintenance halls or were out in the main lobby of the mall, but didn't see anyone, not even a zombie in sight. She heard something off in the distance from one of the stores. She knew that she shouldn't go. But she was curious and she didn't know if it was someone alive, maybe injured or if it was one of those zombies. Leon watched as Blair disappeared towards a strange sound.

"Blair!" Leon had shouted, but she seemingly ignored him. Leon turned back towards Clayton who was quite a bit scared.

"Don't worry, I'm here. Just grab my hand and don't let go, Okay?" he said to Clayton as he held out his hand which Clayton took. Leon took off down the hall, but not fast, just so Clayton could keep up.

Blair walked into the storage room of the back of the store and heard another noise from the front, it sounded like the moans and shuffles of the undead. She continued, but she walked slowly because of her fear. She took a deep breath as he came even closer to the noise and opened the door, when she seen what she hoped she wouldn't there were around three zombies eating something that looked like what used to be the clerk. She backed up but stepped on a hanger that was on the floor and directed the zombies attention towards her.

"Shit!" she turned and started to run, but fell over a mannequin that was laying on the floor. Sherry ran and seen Blair lying on the floor and the zombies coming towards her. Blair looked at the little girl and she made an effort to get to her feet. She jumped up and ran towards the doors, she opened one when a zombie had managed to grab onto her neck. She started to choke and couldn't breath through the zombies' grasp. She raised her elbow and yanked it backwards towards the zombie. The zombie had fell backwards and she was able to get away, just enough to run out and down the hall.

"Shit, Blair. Are you alright?" he asked. Blair looked around to see that the little girl was not with her.

"Damn!" she turned and re-entered the store, She raised her axe and prepared to get Sherry back. The other two zombies were right there in front of her. Blair swung her axe at them and sliced into them and they fell to the floor lifeless, blood spraying around them. She looked around and saw the last zombie, the one that had choked her. Leon had followed closely behind Blair and watched her drop them like rag dolls.

"Nice." he thought to himself with a smirk, He then heard moaning from farther back in the store. He aimed his Baretta at the last creature's head, it was hard for him to aim. His vision was a bit blurry. But just when he thought he had aimed at the creature's head. It twitched a bit and the bullet hit the creature in the neck.

"Damn." he moved a little closer and fired again. This time, hitting the mark. The zombie dropped to the floor lifeless.

"Leon, there was a little girl around here. We have to find her, she can't be any older than eight years old and she's wandering around out here alone." Blair explained. Leon nodded his head in agreement and patted Clayton in the back, Clayton had been crouched down and with his eyes shut and ears plugged while Leon shot the zombie. Clayton got up and hugged Leon's leg. Blair however walked around the store and looked for the little girl.

"Hello?" she called out and found the mannequin that had she had tripped over. Unknown to Blair, Sherry had hid under the mannequin and was hoping not to be noticed by any zombies. Blair looked around some more and noticed Sherry was underneath the mannequin. Blair picked Sherry up in her arms and hugged her.

"Thank god, you're alright." Blair said. Sherry however was a bit creeped out. Blair stopped.

"I'm Blair. What's your name?"

"Sherry."

"Okay, Sherry. Let's get going it isn't safe here." She added. The two got up off of the floor, and walked back to where Leon and Clayton had waited. Blair was getting tired. Her eyes felt heavy and dry. She blinked a few times and looked at Leon.

"Where to now? What about the others?" she asked Leon.

Clayton looked at Leon and picked up a steel pipe from the ground. He looked at it and held onto it tightly. A zombie was crawling towards Clayton. The entire lower half of it's body was torn off. Clayton took the pipe and began bashing the zombie in the head. He had watched Leon shoot them. How hard could it be? He wondered. He looked back up at Leon, who looked back at Clayton. Leon was a bit worried about Clayton - a boy his age killing zombies. But shrugged it off.

"Nice one, Clayton." he said. Clayton smiled back. Leon then turned back to Blair and Sherry.

"Well, If we are to get out of here, we need to find the others first. Plus, I need more ammo for this gun. The cop didn't have any." he said again. Leon looked at Sherry.

"Hey, do you know if there are any other survivors?" he asked her.

" Yeah, They were in the hallways on the other side of the mall. They said they would meet up with us." Sherry answered

"They?" Leon wondered confusingly. Leon didn't understand how other survivors would know who they were and where they were.

"William and Zack." Sherry explained.

"Ah yes, the boy and the man from the sporting goods." he remembered. Blair had listened to their conversation intently as she looked around. She didn't hear or see anything. But she still didn't think that didn't mean anything.

She held the axe close to her as she looked down at Leon's little brother, Clayton. "How cute." she thought. Turning around, she saw something moving in the distance. She tensed a little and held her breath. Leon had looked at Blair and noticed she was fixated on something when he looked in the distance, he noticed someone or something was over there. Leon put his finger to his lips in an attempt to tell them to be quiet. He pulled out his pistol and made sure there was one bullet left in the chamber and readied it in that direction.

Ivy Hunt had crawled out from under a table in a small cafe in the mall. Her head was throbbing, and she had a deep gash in her arm.

"Help me, someone!" she screamed. Blair and Leon heard her call for help. They ran to the noise, and opened one of the doors, inside it was a cafe where they found Ivy.

"Hey, are you okay?" Blair gasped as she saw the gash in Ivy's arm. Blair levelled a hand to help her up.

"What happened to you?" Blair asked.

"What the hell happened?" Ivy cried out.

"I don't remember anything before this..." Ivy exclaimed, putting her hand to her head. Ugh, My head hurts, She said as she scrambled to her feet.

"Where is everyone? Why is this place wrecked? It smells horrible." she asked.

Clayton looked at Leon and threw him the pipe, he didn't want Leon to get it or anything. He jumped on a nearby zombies back and holding it back from Leon. Leon grabbed the rod from Clayton

"Thank you." he said kindly. The zombie was almost upon his leg. Leon wouldn't have time to get in a good hit, but then Clayton jumped on the creatures zombie had came at Jarold, but this time he pushed it away from him and roundhouse kicked it. It's neck broke with a satisfying snap.

"I'll hold them off, you two go." Jarold said to Zack and William. Jarold jumped into the pile of zombies, axe kicking one of them down to the ground, then he smashed it's head. He elbowed one in the chest, then turned around and punched it straight in the head, knocking it down.

He put his fist out and did a complete 360. Knocking the zombies a few inches away, which gave him a gap to escape. He jumped through the gap without hesitation. There was a bench leaning against a fountain which he decided to use as a weapon. It weighed no less than forty pounds. He picked it up and threw it at the zombies, thereby knocking them on top of each other.

"No, don't go by yourself!" Zack shouted, but he was already gone.

Zack silently wished Jarold luck and then started to run the opposite way where there was less zombies.

"Come on, William!"

Jarold took this chance to run in the opposite direction. The mall was still crowded with zombies, but he was still alive. He climbed onto the fountain which led up to the balcony. He hopped onto the balcony where there were slightly less zombies. There was one, but he kicked it and it flipped over the railing and landed with a splat on the ground below. He looked over the railing and looked at the zombie. It had cracked it's head on the edge of the fountain.

"Sucks to be you... Sucks to be me too." he laughed to himself. The situation right now was ridiculous but it was dangerous. He couldn't think about it right now, all he could think about was survival. He ran into the nearest open shop which happened to be a Sporting Goods store that had the gate and barricade destroyed. There was a open vent that led into the neighbouring Jewelry Store.

Jarold just hoped that whoever was in this store got out alive before the zombies got in.

After grabbing a baseball bat left on the floor of the store, he made his way to the sound of someone crying for help and came up on a bizarre scene. A kid was handing a man a rod as a zombie crawled up on him, however before Jarold could offer his assistance, something cold and clammy grabbed Jarold from behind, he turned around and a zombie was holding onto his shoulder, it's teeth were coming ever closer to his face.

Jarold jammed the baseball bat upwards into the chin of the creature. It's head snapped backwards as it fell dead. "How the hell did I miss him?" Jarold wondered as he turned to the incident in front of him.

Zack had looked in a few of the shops as he ran past the zombies. He saw two women in a cafe and stopped. He turned and started walking towards them.

"Hey!" he shouted, he recognized one of the woman as the girl from across the sporting goods store he had been in.

He was walking towards the entrance of the cafe, when a zombie staggered into view. He quickly tried to aim his rifle but the zombie grabbed him. He fell to the floor, his rifle clattering under one of the tables. He tried to fight and push off the zombie, but he couldn't.

"Help me!" he screamed, trying his hardest to keep the zombie from biting him. He looked over. William was gone! William had the crossbow and Zack was pretty much a meal with out it. Blair looked at the girl, then at Leon and Clayton, then at Jarold and Zack. Blair didn't know what to do, she helped Ivy get back onto her feet.

"Yeah, it's those things that did all this." Blair didn't know what to call them, she wasn't sure if they were alive or dead anymore.

"Be careful, Clayton!" Leon shouted in worry. The zombie was busy trying to grab Clayton from it's back, but seemingly couldn't.

"Hey ugly, Stay away from my brother!" Leon shouted as he swung the rod and clipped the zombie in the face. A crunch sounded through the store, but the creature was still moving. Leon aimed the rod at the creatures face and shoved it through it's skull, dropping it dead... again. Leon got up off the floor and dusted himself off, he looked and found the gun he dropped. Leon bent down and picked it up, then he walked over with Clayton to where Blair was with his new woman.

"Hello, name's Leon." he said to the young woman.

"Ivy... what's going on? I can't remember anything." the girl replied.

Leon suddenly heard the sound of shouting echoed through the mall.

"One second." Leon took off to find Zack being pinned by one of those things. Leon stopped near the zombie as it got up slightly to try to take another bite.

"There ya go, give me a smile!" Leon said, taking aim at the creatures face. Leon fired the gun and put a bullet in the middle of the creatures head. The man threw off the creature and it laid on the floor lifeless.

"Are you alright?" Leon asked, holding out a hand to the fallen man. Zack looked up to see who had saved his life. It was the guy who had asked him if he was okay when he was in the Sporting Goods store.

"Yes, I'm okay. Thank you." his voice coming out a little shaky. He searched around for his rifle and found it under a table. Zack looked around and frowned. He didn't see William anywhere. He looked at Leon.

"Hey, please tell me that you've seen William or Sherry? I don't know where they are. They're just kids, I mean. I know they can take care of themselves, but..." Zack asks.

"No, I haven't seen William - and if you mean that little girl - she was with us just a while ago... I don't know where she is." Leon said, a storm of worry coming across his face.

"Any other survivors?" Zack asked him.

"There's Blair, my little brother Clayton, and that young woman over there, didn't catch her name though. My name's Leon."

"I'm Zack, there was another survivor with me just a few minutes ago... I don't think he told me his name." Zack said spitefully.

"Come on, we should get to the others." Leon said. Zack picked himself off of the ground and the two walked towards the cafe, a few zombies had already began walking towards them. Leon introduces him to the group

"This is Zack." Leon says - the introductions are cut short by the flickering lights. Blair looked up, she wasn't sure if it was just her, or not. Some of her hair fell out of her head and the light sparkled off her blue eyes. Leon looked up to see if it was just his mind, but they flickered again.

"We better find some place to settle down, before the lights go out and we can't see anything." said Leon, scared. Leon looked around. They all got up off of the ground and began walking.

"Do you think it's them doing this? The roof..." Blair whispered.

"I don't know." Leon replied.

"We should find a security room or something, We might find flashlights or something." Leon continued, wondering their opinion. They all nodded.

Leon looked around, there was an open door that read Maintenance Halls/Security Room. "Bingo." he thought to himself as they began to run through the door and down the corridor. They reached a room, they weren't entirely sure if it was the security room or not. The room tag on the door was partially sliced off so all it read was "Securi-". The door was partially open, which was not necessarily a good sign. Leon was about to open the door full and enter when Zack grabbed his arm.

"What about William and Sherry, and that other guy I was with?" Zack asked worried about them. However, that's when Zack and the others noticed a gruesome image inside the security room under one of the desks lay William, a pool of blood around him, he laid against a wall, his eyes closed and apparently dead.

"I don't know, I'm pretty sure that guy can take care of himself, I saw him fighting, when I was fending off that thing with Clayton. Now, as for Sherry and William, I don't - Oh my god." Leon stopped only then noticing the body. Leon ran over to William, trying to be careful, making sure he wasn't one of them.

"God, we better get out of here." Leon said as he looked over at Blair and waited for her suggestion."Let's get any supplies as possible. Food, weapons, lights. We may have to go to the roof." Blair added her opinion. Leon got up and began to walk away from William.

"I'm not dead yet." a voice emitted. Leon and the others looked at William with shock and surprise. William looks at Leon.

"Remember the mission? I guess you could say that's over with now that Annette has called me about that G-Virus maniac on the loose." William blurted, nearly out of breath. He knew they wouldn't understand anything he said, or what it meant. But he had to say something like a smart-ass otherwise he wouldn't be able to make the best of this shitty moment.

"G-Virus? Who's Annette?" Zack asked William. All of a sudden, Zack heard a strange noise. He held a finger to his lips to signal William to be silent. He looked up and noticed it was coming from an air vent that was directly above them. He could hear a lot of movement from the vent. He heard an unnatural scream and knew something was in there.

"Shit!" Zack screamed and grabbed both of William's hands. He pulled him out from under the table dragging a trail of blood with him, then hearing something crash to the floor in front of William, he quickly pulled William to his feet and pushed William behind him. He looked at the creature and his jaw dropped. It looked like an inside out man. It's brain was showing and it didn't have eyes. It's long tongue was snaking out towards them and Zack aimed. He fired, hitting it's tongue. The tongue receded and Zack quietly tried to reload his rifle.

"Come back for some more! Didn't ya? You stupid-ass Licker!" William shouted at the creature.

"Licker? Who the fuck would design that?" said Leon as he aimed his gun at the creature and fired four shots at it, nailing three in it's body. He didn't necessarily know if the creature was designed, but with all William had said before - and the thing having a name, it'd seem likely. "We better get out of here." Leon said, grabbing Clayton.

"Let's hurry our asses away from this thing." said Leon backing away.

Zack fired another shot at the Licker. It hit it's head, but missed the brain. Zack reloaded and grabbed hold of William. There were a few zombies ahead, but not many. Zack aimed his rifle at them and shot them. He looked at the signs and found one of the arrow signs and one that pointed to security. He could see the office down the hall. He grabbed a hold of William and made a full charge for the room.

Zack held the door open and looked down at the others and with his rifle aimed at what William had called "Licker", but the situation turned as he found his rifle out of ammo, not a clue as to where he had put the rest of it to reload. Blair looked up, running with the others and stared at it, looking at it's brain and disgusting tongue, then she froze, the others running into the security room. Blair had just stopped, she couldn't move an inch of her body, she could only look and stare at this hellish creature. This monster William had called "Licker."

"What the fuck?" she whispered pretty loudly. Her jaw just dropped and froze and the creature slowly moved towards her, sliding its long snake like tongue up the bottom of her shirt, against her stomach and her breasts all the way up to her neck. Her eyes grew big as the creature began to hiss.

"Hey you!" a voice shouted. It was Jarold.

"What are you doing, lady?" he shouted to Blair, he didn't ever catch her name. The Licker looked back at Jarold and hissed. Jarold threw the baseball bat from the sporting goods store - the one Zack had used to distract the zombies away from Sherry and William - aside. Instead he pulled out the 44. revolver magnum that William had left at the entrance of the mall.

He aimed it at the Licker's tongue. The Licker finally gave up on the Magnum, It had reminiscent of an arrow from William's crossbow still lodged in it, alongside the multitude of bullets from Zack's rifle and Leon's pistol. Instead, the creature jumped towards Blair, raising it's claws.

Jarold followed it with the Magnum, knowing what would happen if he missed. He fired, barely missing the creature's brain like he was aiming for.

The creature screamed before landing on Blair, pushing her down with it's own weight. Jarold dropped the revolver and ran towards them, blood poured out of the Licker's wound and onto the floor. Jarold punched the thing off of Blair and check to see if the creature was dead. He looked back at Blair, his voice filled with concern.

Blair continued to stare at the creature as she just barely heard someone call out to her. She hit the ground with a thud. She opened her eyes. Jarold was gone, She had hallucinated the entire thing! Leon ran out of the security room and grabbed a hold of Blair, dragging her into the room and shutting the door behind them.

Jarold was being closed in by zombies, ten were coming in from his left, while seven were coming from his right. He was in a tight spot. There was a glass plate window blocking him,he took his bat and began thrashing the window, hoping that the aluminium would break the glass rather than just making more noise. Thankfully, he started seeing cracks in it and began aiming for the cracks, taking out part of the window. He crawled through the part, cutting his back pretty good. It would take the zombies a while to figure out there's a hole in the window, so he had to look for an escape route.

He looked around the store, which seemed to be a children's clothing store. There was a room in the back, which he ran to. The door was locked so he kicked the door, opening it. He looked around the room, noticing an air vent about the size of a grown man. He opened the crate and crawled into it. Hopefully, this lead out of hell and into somewhere safe.

Leon watched as the others walked in and closed the door behind them, he was showing off to Clayton by spinning his pistol around like a cowboy. Leon didn't really like guns, but today he was starting to like them more. Unfortunately, he'd be out of ammunition shortly if he couldn't find more - and fast.

"That's what William called a Licker, the name sure fits." Zack said, looking at the inanimate body of the creature, Zack ran back to the room where Leon and the others had been and sat down. He looked over at Blair and William.

Both were pretty badly sliced up by the creatures, both were wincing in pain. But even still, William could still stand. Blair looked up at the boy who was now even more taller than her. She couldn't find anything to say, her leg hurt too much. At the least they had escaped from the zombies and killed that thing, but they still had to find their way to the roof, or something. Blair grabbed her leg, the pain was unbearable. She pulled up her jeans to look at her leg that was severely bruised. Her eyes grew wild at seeing this. She took a deep breath and touched the purple, green and dark blue mass on her leg. It hurt like hell. William turned around and looked down at the girl to see her wincing in pain.

"Here, let me help." William said as he leaned down slowly, fighting off his own pain and ripped off part of his shirt in an attempt to tie it around her leg to stop the bleeding. Revealing in the process, his own leg which had blood dripping down to his feet. Blair turned her head away from his leg. These wounds were too much to see, too much. She closed her eyes and winced again.

Leon walked over to the door to the security office and rested his ear next to it. He had closed it, but not locked it - just in case. He paced around the room and was getting nervous. He was a medical student at the local college, but he couldn't possibly help Blair and William without someone with more advanced medical knowledge and the right equipment

"Come on, Leon. It's a mall, they have everything here." he thought to himself. He was trying to go visit friends when this all started. He made up his mind, he opened the door and checked both ways for signs of those zombies. It was all clear, he was going to go look for someone, anyone. They couldn't be the only survivors in the mall.

Jarold climbed through the large air vent, all the way to a dead end. He looked up and there was a passage above him. He extended his arms and legs out and began crawling up the passage. He made it to the top and flung his arms up, pulling himself up. There was a vent below him, he smashed it out and jumped through. He was in a room full of people, however, he could tell that one of the people had just left. They all looked at him. Jarold looked around, he'd seen them before at the cafe - and Zack and William. Jarold was glad to see they were still in one piece.

"You guys alright?" Jarold asks them.

The two just stare at Jarold and give him a comforting nod. Jarold however notices Clayton sitting in the corner of the room and walks up to the boy.

"What's wrong?" he asks cautiously.

"My big brother is out there!" Clayton responds.

"I'm sure he's going to be alright." Jarold says, trying to calm Clayton down, that's when Clayton holds out a pistol, Jarold looks up at the boy.

"He gave me this!" Clayton says. Jarold looks back at the door and walks towards it, he opens it and looks at the survivors inside.

"Nobody open this door." he says, clearing his throat and releasing his voice in a cold dark tone. He closes the door behind him and walks into the creepy corridor, the dead Licker laying on the floor.

"What the fuck is that thing?" Jarold says, walking up to the creature, kneeling down and poking at it. "It's dead, thank god." he thinks to himself. Suddenly, Jarold turns his head to the sound of footsteps. He raises himself up off of the ground and quietly walks towards the sound. He turns a corner sharply and see's Leon. He walks up to Leon and raises his arm.

"Hey." Jarold says. This shocks Leon and he quickly turns with his fists raised. Leon sighs with relief and lowers his fists. He's pretty sure he saw Jarold with Zack sometime before, though he isnt a hundred-percent certain.

"Hey. I'm Leon Lockheart." Leon introduces himself, Jarold nods.

"I'm Jarold - Jarold Lee."

Leon smiles and motions towards one of the doors. He continues to walk forward open it. He wanders in, looks around and smiles. To his delight on one of the tables he finds the schematics for the air vents in the mall

"What is it?" Jarold asks, wondering about the smile that had grown on Leon's face.

"The air vents." Leon says.

"Yeah, that's how I ended up in this place. A little boy told me his older brother was out here, thought I'd give you a hand." Jarold explains.

"They lead out of this place, to the roof. There should be an emergency ladder there, we can use that to escape the mall." Leon continues.

"Sounds decent. But then again, how exactly can we be certain it's safe and those things aren't wandering on the rooftop, and that monstrosities like that ugly ass thing back there aren't in the air vents?"

"We can't. But it's our only real option. I don't see much of a choice here." Leon answers.

"Sound's like a plan."

William looked around at the survivors in the room. He had tried to keep in his worry, but he couldn't help the fact that he wanted to punch one of them for not keeping track of Sherry. She was nowhere to be seen, and he knew, she would be very lucky to survive on her own. He looked over at Ivy, he didn't know her name, or anything about her. But at this moment, Ivy was looking very sick, coughing and all.

He looked at Blair who he was sitting next to, only to notice that she was leaning on his shoulder and sleeping once again.

Zack looked at Blair who was leaning on William's shoulder sleeping and winked at him.

William laughed under his breath, though he partially wanted to punch Zack for thinking that. He looked down at Blair, and watched as she unconciously reached out and grabbed onto William's shirt and grasped it hard. William looked back up at Zack at shooted him a serious look before nodding in the direction of Ivy. Zack nodded back seriously and he walked towards Ivy, kneeling down and confronting her.

"Hey, you okay?" he asked.

"I don't know, I feel kind of sick." she replied, smiling at him.

"It's probably just a concussion, it looks like you banged your head pretty bad." he tried to humor his sentence.

"Yeah." she said, moving her hand through her hair and looking at the small bit of blood on her fingers from her head. It had to be the excuse for her amnesia.

"Hey." she said, before Zack could leave, he turned his attention back towards her.

"Yeah?" he asked.

"What happened here? I was just shopping, when someone grabbed me and then I woke up under a table. Only to see you guys beating the crap out of some dudes."

"You're gonna think I'm crazy. But those are zombies." Zack answered.

"Zombies?" Ivy said, she really couldn't believe that their were zombies in Raccoon.

"Yeah. We've been running around this mall for the past god knows how many hours without sleep or rest, fighting these things. But I'm sure we'll get out of here."

"How many of you are alive?" she asked.

"There's me. Leon's the man who left. Blair is the young blonde girl over there, the boy over there is William, he looks between eighteen or twenty with that facial hair and all, but he's only thirteen, the little boy is Clayton he's gotta be like five or something, he's Leon's little brother, and I saw a man earlier - and we had a twelve year old girl with us too - Sherry."

"Sherry - is she alright?" Ivy asked, worried about the safety of the girl.

"Yeah, I'm sure she's fine. She's very mature." he reassured.

"I don't remember much, I just walked into the mall, and it was empty -" she stops, trying to remember has given her a horrible headache.

"I saw this eight year old girl in like a sailor outfit run by me and into the mall cop office, then this psycho bit me. He must of been one of those zombies." Ivy finished.

William and Zack looked up in concern. If she was right, Sherry was out there alone in the center of the mall, and Ivy was herself infected. It would make sense. There would be no other way she could survive unconcious under a table in the five or six hours since this crap all started without being devoured. By the sounds of it, she had only been around for the past two.

That's why there wasn't really any zombies in the main lobby when she entered, they would've already flushed out into the back corridors of the mall since, but it was still a risk to go out into the open, exposed like that.

"I must be lucky, if I just got away from a zombie with just a bite, right?" she said optimistically, glad she wasn't eaten.

"Yeah." Zack lies through his teeth.

Ivy begins coughing, the coughing eventually reaches the point where it's extremely loud and painful, she coughs up blood into her hand and looks away in disgust.

"Why don't you just tell her?" William says, rising himself up out of his seat and looking at Zack.

"What is there to tell me?" Ivy asks, starting to doze off.

"You're infected. In however many minutes, you're going to fall unconcious and then you'll come back, as one of those zombies out there." William answers, Zack turns his head away in depression. He didn't want Ivy to know she was going to die, as the saying goes, Ignorance is Bliss.

"Is this true?" Ivy asked Zack weakly. He turned and looked at her.

"Yeah... It starts with a bite, maybe a scratch, but normally you're okay if they scratch you - but anything that gets whatever sickness they have into you. Then you become sick, and eventually you die - Then you come back."

"Oh." Ivy says before the coughing returns, this time accompanied by a horrible pain in her gut. She falls out of her seat and spasms on the floor in pain, Zack can do nothing but watch in horror, Ivy is in such tremendous pain that she can't even scream, she continues spasming, that's when she stops and looks over at Zack and reaches her arm out, tears flowing down her eyes.

"Zack, help me!" she tries to call out, but nothing emmits. Then, she collapses on the floor, lifeless. Zack lifts her body from the ground and rests in on the chair where she had sat before. He grabs a fire blanket and places it on her body. Zack is then startled by the sound of the door opening.

He looks to see William on his way to leave.

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

"I'm getting Sherry, one way or the other. Stay here if you want. I'm not letting her die out there." William says miserably. He walks out of the room and closes the door behind him.

Zack looks back over at Ivy's body, he mourns for a few minutes. He actually liked her. Blair had Leon, William had Sherry, Jarold had himself, and Clayton had his older brother, but he was alone in this whole mess. Maybe he didn't need someone, but that didn't mean he didn't want someone. Zack brushed Ivy's short black hair out of her face, she was beautiful. He sat there, silently mourning, it seemed like no time had passed when he realised it had been over half an hour and seemingly no word was to be heard from William, Sherry, Jarold, or Leon. Zack had forgotten all about them. That's when he looked, he had to blink twice to make sure, but he saw Ivy's eyes open, they were a blank, dead white. Her skin was pale and cold to the touch. Ivy raised herself up, slowly, unleashing a silent moan as she did before standing to her feet and very slowly walking towards Zack.

"Don't make me do this." he silently whimpered. But to no avail, she continued. No longer anything but a shadow of her former self, she moaned loudly and continued to shamble towards him. Then, Zack froze in shock as a gun had fired a bullet straight through Ivy's head, dropping her dead again. He looked over at Clayton who was frozen in tears, still repeatingly pressing the trigger of the Beretta his brother had given him. But all that happened was a click, as that was the last bullet in the gun.

"It's not the same." Clayton cryed to himself in tears. Zack looked at the young boy, he was right. It wasn't, it was one thing when it was some random zombie out for flesh, but if it was someone you knew, even if it wasn't for long, it was near impossible to put a bullet in them.

"Clayton." Zack muttered. He walked up to Clayton and the young boy hugged him, he sighed. He didn't know much, but what he knew was this mall was a living hell literally. He'd be lucky if he left the mall and didn't have post-traumatic stress. Heck, he'd be lucky if he even left the mall. Blair opened her eyes and looked at the scene. She closed her eyes and curled up in a ball, and tried to go back to sleep. Trying to pretend that what had just happened hadn't. Maybe it would help. She didn't know.


End file.
